Quality of life among tuberculosis patients on treatment in Southwest Nigeria

Background: Tuberculosis is still a major public health concern that affects millions of people worldwide. Despite the fact that tuberculosis has a well-established treatment, little attention is paid to the quality of life of TB patients on treatment. Poor quality of life has been linked to lower treatment adherence in patients having TB. As a result, the purpose of this study was to evaluate the quality of life of tuberculosis patients and its associated factors.

Methods: The study was a cross-sectional study conducted in Southwest Nigeria among drug-susceptible tuberculosis patients between February and September 2020. The World Health Organization Quality of Life Brief version questionnaire was used to collect data on quality of life (WHOQOL-BREF). A total of 330 people were approached. SPSS version 20 was used to analyze the data. The descriptive data was analyzed using means, standard deviations, and proportions, while the Chi-Square test and binary logistic regression were used to assess the association between variables. P < 0.05 was used to determine statistical significance.

Results: The respondents' average age was 35.50 ± 11.59 years and most of the respondents (67.9%) were males. The overall mean quality of life was good (4.01 ± 0.529) with the highest score (66.47 ± 10.50) in the environmental domain and the least score (62.88 ± 15.36) in the social domain. There was an association between good quality of life and the patient's length of illness prior to diagnosis (AOR = 0.468, 95% CI = 0.225-0.973).

Conclusion: In line with this study, the overall quality of life of drug-susceptible tuberculosis patients is good and is related to the duration of illness before the diagnosis of tuberculosis was made. Therefore, more efforts should be made to increase awareness of tuberculosis and intensify active case finding to enhance early case detection and a better quality of life.