Abstract

DEMOGRAPHIC PARAMETERS AND QUALITY OF LIFE IN PATIENTS WITH TINEA VERSICOLOR

Sharma Jyoti*, Kaushal Jyoti and Aggarwal Kamal

ABSTRACT

Background: Tinea versicolor is one of the commonest infectious skin diseases. It has negative impact on quality of life of patients due to cosmetic reasons leading to significant emotional distress. Skin infections have lower impact on mortality than other diseases. Skin diseases affect appearance, self-esteem, and morbidity more than conventional outcome measures. Methods: This was a prospective study conducted on patients with tinea versicolor after IRB clearance. 60 patients were enrolled for the study. The demographic parameters noted were age, gender, marital status, education status and area of living at baseline and they were given drug treatment for a period of 2 weeks. Quality of Life assessment was done by Dermatology Life Quality Index Questionnaire at baseline and at week 2. Pearson correlation analysis was done to see the effect of demographic parameters on QoL at baseline and at week 2. Results: The mean age of patients in the study was 23.75±8.41 years. Maximum number of patients was in age group of 18-22 years. There was no significant correlation between age and QoL. Males were more affected than females (81.6%; 18.3%). 26.6% patients were married and 73.3% were unmarried. There was no statistically significant correlation of age, gender, marital status and education status with DLQI score (p=0.280, p=0.301, p=0.80, p=0.628; respectively) at baseline. Similarly, no significant correlation was found at week 2 (p>0.05). However, after appropriate drug treatment, there was significant improvement in QoL of the patients (p<0.05). Conclusion: QoL is not affected by demographic parameters in patients with tinea versicolor but drug treatment significantly improved the QoL.

Keywords: Demographic, Quality of life, DLQI.