Measuring health status in HIV disease: challenges from a sleep study

This article reports on the challenges of measuring health status in a study that tested whether there were differences in sleep and well-being between a group of persons with HIV who reduced their caffeine intake from baseline by 90% or greater for 30 days (n = 44) versus a group of persons with HIV who continued their usual caffeine consumption (n = 44). The MOS-HIV Health Survey summary scores were used as health status measures and as covariates. While results indicated that physical and mental health status improved among experimental group subjects, several methodological considerations are offered for further HIV/AIDS researchers: (1) How should health status with various degrees of disease progression be classified? (2) How can health status from different CD4 and HIV viral load measurements be properly inferred? (3) If opting to also employ a health status questionnaire, should general or disease-specific instruments be used?