Tropical Journal of Pharmaceutical Research

Original Research Article | OPEN ACCESS

Association between Hepatitis B-Related Knowledge and Health-Related Quality of Life

Noman ul Haq^1,2 , Mohamed Azmi Hassali², Asrul Akmal Shafie², Fahad Saleem², Maryam Farooqui³, Hisham Aljadhey⁴, Fiaz Ud Din Ahmad⁵, Qaiser Iqbal¹

¹Department of Pharmacy, University of Balochistan, Quetta, Pakistan; ²Discipline of Social and Administrative Pharmacy, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang; ³Faculty of Pharmacy, Universiti Technology MARA, Bertam, Penang, Malaysia; ⁴College of Pharmacy, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; ⁵Department of Physiology, School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia.

For correspondence:- Noman Haq Email: nomanhaq79@gmail.com Tel:+923337830922

Received: 10 June 2013 Accepted: 26 April 2014 Published: 25 July 2014

Citation: Haq Nu, Hassali MA, Shafie AA, Saleem F, Farooqui M, Aljadhey H, et al. Association between Hepatitis B-Related Knowledge and Health-Related Quality of Life. Trop J Pharm Res 2014; 13(7):1163-1168 doi: 10.4314/tjpr.v13i7.22

© 2014 The authors.
This is an Open Access article that uses a funding model which does not charge readers or their institutions for access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0) and the Budapest Open Access Initiative (http://www.budapestopenaccessinitiative.org/read), which permit unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly credited..

Abstract

Purpose: To evaluate the association between patient’s knowledge of Hepatitis-B and Health Related Quality of Life (HRQoL).

Methods: A cross sectional, descriptive study was undertaken with 390 hepatitis-B patients attending two public hospitals in Quetta City, Pakistan. Knowledge of hepatitis-B was assessed using a pre-validated questionnaire. European Quality of Life scale was used for the assessment of HRQoL. Descriptive analysis was used to elaborate patients’ demographic characteristics while inferential statistics were applied to report the association among study variables. Spearman’s rho correlation was used to identify the association between variables.

Results: Out of 390, (230, 59.5 %) were males and the mean age of the subjects was 36.2 ± 9.2 years. One hundred and three (26 %) had primary level of education and 109 (27.9 %) were employees in the private sector. Eighty four (21 %) had a monthly income of between 10001-15000 Pakistan rupees (1 PKR = 0.0115527 USD) with 272 (69.7 %) respondents resident in urban areas. Mean HRQoL and Hepatitis-B related knowledge (HBRK) scores were categorized as poor (0.37± 0.3) and (8.52 ± 2.7) respectively. The correlation coefficient between HRQoL and HBRK was -0.102 (p < 0.001), indicating a week negative association between the study variables.

Conclusion: The findings indicate a negative association between Hepatitis-B related knowledge and HRQoL. Therefore, providing disease-related knowledge to patients does not necessarily improve HRQoL. More attention should be given to identify individual factors that affect HRQoL among patients with Hepatitis-B.

Keywords: Health related quality of life, HRQoL, Hepatitis-B, Disease-related knowledge, Association