<p>Cigarette smoking is prevalent in HIV-infected people, resulting in higher mortality rate and more premature heart and lung diseases in the highly active antiretroviral therapy era. Smoking is a modifiable risk factor for these adverse outcomes and smoking cessation in HIV-positive smokers is feasible, although further efforts are needed to improve smoking cessation programs in HIV-positive persons.</p> <p>In this thesis, I examined the role of smoking in mortality and morbidity in HIV-positive Ontarians, and piloted a smoking cessation program featuring a novel smoking cessation aid, varenicline, in HIV-infected smokers. In addition, I explored three different methods to resolve missing data, by excluding, grouping and multiply imputing missing data. I adopted three different study designs in my thesis studies: retrospective cohort, cross-sectional and open label study.</p> <p>We found smoking prevalence in HIV-infected people was consistently higher than in the general population. Smoking was associated with a higher risk of death, of respiratory symptoms, hospitalization and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and with reduced lung function and less CD4-T-lymphocyte improvement over time. We found varenicline was as effective in HIV-positive smokers as in non-HIV smokers reported by previous studies.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:mcmaster.ca/oai:macsphere.mcmaster.ca:11375/11167 |
| Date | 10 1900 |
| Creators | Cui, Qu |
| Contributors | Smieja, Marek Jozef, Thabane, Lehana, Andrew McIvor, Fiona Smaill, Health Research Methodology |
| Source Sets | McMaster University |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | thesis |
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