The Benefits of Exercise Training for Quality of Life in HIV/AIDS in the Post-HAART Era

The use of highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) has served to significantly reduce the mortality of HIV-infected persons. However, this treatment is associated with a host of adverse effects: fatigue, nausea, pain, anxiety and depression. Rather than utilise traditional pharmacological treatments for these effects, many HIV/AIDS patients are utilising adjunct therapies to maintain their quality of life while they undergo treatment. Exercise has consistently been listed as one of the most popular self-care therapies and a small number of studies have been conducted to examine the impact of exercise on the most common self-reported symptoms of HIV and AIDS and the adverse effects of treatment. Although the results are generally positive, there are clear limitations to this work. The existing studies have utilised small samples and experienced high rates of attrition. In addition, the majority of the studies were conducted prior to the widespread use of HAART, which limits the ability to generalise these data. As a result, data from other chronic disease and healthy samples are used to suggest that exercise has the potential to be a beneficial treatment across the range of symptoms and adverse effects experienced by HIV-infected individuals. However, additional research is required with this population to demonstrate these effects.