The use of 2 health-related quality-of-life measures in a sample of persons infected with human immunodeficiency virus

The purpose of this analysis was to examine the ability of the MOS-HIV (Medical Outcomes Study-Human Immunodeficiency Virus) Health Survey and the EuroQol Group's EQ-5D questionnaire to discriminate between subjects in predefined disease-severity groups on the basis of clinical-indicator status (i.e., CD4 cell counts, HIV type 1 [HIV-1] RNA copies). This study used medical records of and instruments completed by 242 HIV-infected patients. The ability of the health-related quality-of-life instruments to discriminate between subjects stratified by disease severity was assessed by means of receiver-operating characteristic (ROC) curve analysis. The EQ-5D (P < .05) and MOS-HIV physical health summary (PHS) scores (P < .01) were able to discriminate between groups of subjects stratified by disease severity on the basis of either CD4 cell counts or HIV-1 RNA copies. These findings provide further evidence of the validity of the use of EQ-5D and the MOS-HIV questionnaire and suggest that they may be practical tools for the monitoring of health status from the HIV-infected patient's perspective.