Psychosocial factors associated with adherence to antiretroviral medications in a sample of HIV-positive African American drug users

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to investigate factors affecting antiretroviral adherence among African American drug users, specifically to identify associations between self-reported adherence levels and psychosocial measures selected with guidance from the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping (TMSC). The study was conducted using data collected from 137 HIV-positive African American drug users who were receiving antiretroviral medications at the time they were interviewed. Bivariate associations were investigated using correlational analyses and variables showing a significant correlation with adherence were entered into a multivariate regression model. The multivariate model showed only perceived efficacy of antiretrovirals and one measure of perceived barriers, simply forgetting to take medications, were independently related to adherence. These preliminary findings suggest that theoretical approaches to understanding antiretroviral adherence must address a range of variables, including but not limited to behavioural practices, cognitive appraisals, affective responses and social support. Further studies using the complete TMSC are recommended.

Factors that influence adherence with disease-modifying therapy in MS

“…Forgetting to take medications has also typically been reported by patients with other illness such as depression, diabetes, HIV, transplant recipients, inflammatory bowel disease, hypertension, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis [3,4,9,11,18,23,24,26]. This observation raises more questions than it answers.…”

Binge Use of Crack Cocaine and Sexual Risk Behaviors Among African-American, HIV-Positive Users

“…Investigators from TCU developed the SRF for use with drug using populations and assessed the instrument's psychometric properties (Knight et al 1994) using two in-treatment samples in Texas. SRF scales have been shown to have good internal reliability and validity (Knight et al 1994) and have been subsequently used in crack-using samples (Simpson et al 1994; Timpson et al 2003; Harzke et al 2004). Cronbach's alpha scores were calculated for psychosocial measures to check their comparability with those obtained in validation studies.…”

Diagnostic Value of Different Adherence Measures Using Electronic Monitoring and Virologic Failure as Reference Standards

“…4,5 Successful clinical management therefore demands nonadherence assessment, however, a reference standard to measure it has, as yet not been agreed on. [6][7][8] Of the measurement methods available, electronic monitoring correlates strongest with virologic outcome 7 and has been shown in cross-validation studies [9][10][11][12] to be the most sensitive.…”