Prevalence of Malnutrition and Associated Factors among HIV Seropositive Adults on Antiretroviral Therapy at the Regional Hospital, Buea, Cameroon

Introduction: Malnutrition refers to deficiencies, excesses, or imbalances in a person’s intake of energy and/or nutrients and HIV which infects CD4 cells causes immune suppression which can further be worsened by poor nutrition. More than 37.7 million people are living with HIV in the world out of which about 36 million are adults.

Aims: The study aimed to determine the prevalence of malnutrition and associated factors among human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) seropositive adults on antiretroviral therapy at the HIV care and treatment center of the Buea Regional hospital, Cameroon.

Study Design: A Hospital-based Cross sectional study design.

Place and duration of study: Buea regional hospital at the HIV care and treatment centre, South West Region of Cameroon between April 2022 to June 2022.

Materials and method: We included 139 HIV seropositive individuals (17 men, 177 women age range 26 to 59 years). Nutritional status was assessed using anthropometric and clinical methods. A 24-hour dietary diversity was assessed using a questionnaire. Data was analyzed using SPSS version 25.0.

Results: The prevalence of underweight, overweight and obesity among the participants were 1.4 %, 38.8%, and 24.4% respectively. In the bivariate analysis, sex of the participants (χ2 = 4.715, p = 0.030) and attendance to HIV-related counseling sessions (χ2 = 4.512, p = 0.034) were significantly associated with malnutrition. The mean dietary diversity score of the study respondents was 4.97±1.6 with only 37% of the respondents achieving a minimum dietary diversity. In the multivariate logistic regression analysis, the odds of those who received HIV-related counselling being malnourished(overweight) was 3.29 times more than those who did not receive HIV-related counselling (AOR=3.29, p=0.036).

Conclusions: There is a high burden of overweight and obesity in the HIV population of the Regional Hospital Buea. The only factor independently associated to malnutrition(overweight) was uptake of nutrition related counselling. Majority of the HIV seropositive patients in the Regional Hospital Buea had a poor dietary diversity. Nutritional counseling should be an important part of persons living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) routine follow-up.