Sleep quality, under-recognition and underreporting of sleep disturbance among HIV patients attending tertiary hospital in Ilorin, Nigeria

Background: Sleep disturbance affects overall health and is under-recognized and under-reported by hospital patients. Objectives: To determine the prevalence of sleep quality among in adult HIV patients and to know whether sleep disturbances are under-recognized and under-reported by patients at medical consultation. Methods: This study was cross-sectional in design, 602 patients attending the outpatient HIV/AIDS clinic of a tertiary center in Nigeria were recruited. Participant Sociodemographic information and clinical history were obtained from their case records. The Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) was used to measure the quality. PSQI questionnaire was administered by trained social workers and those with scores ≥5 were diagnosed with poor sleep quality. Results: The participants were made up of 69.9% females and 30.1% males. According to the PSQI, 28.3% reported poor sleep quality. Majority (61.8%) of the poor sleepers were unaware of their sleep disturbance and only 25.9% of them have reported sleep problem to their physicians. The mean score of those with poor quality sleep (7.2± 2.7) was significantly higher than those with good quality sleep (2.4± 1.1).p Conclusion: Poor sleep quality is common among the HIV patients. The result of this study has implicated the need for increasing awareness, early identification, and treatment of sleep disorders in people living with the condition by health care providers.