ABSTRACT
Health-related quality of life (HRQL) is indisputably one of the most important outcomes of interest in considering a variety of chronic illnesses, including HIV disease. Despite a rapidly growing literature describing the effects of HIV infection and its treatment on HRQL (Burgess and Catalan, 1991; Hays and Shapiro, 1992; Rapkin and Smith, 1993; Wu and Lamping, 1994; Wu and Rubin, 1992), little is known about HRQL in women with HIV disease. This is not surprising given that most of our current knowledge about the psychosocial aspects of HIV infection has been gained from studies of gay men, and to a lesser extent injecting drug users (see review by Lamping and Sewitch, 1990).
