HIV/AIDS Research Methodology

This assignment details the research methodology for studying HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. It emphasizes the importance of using pre-formulated data extraction forms to standardize information regarding study structure, participants, statistical data, and terminology related to sexual health and diseases. The process involves two independent authors reviewing articles and resolving any discrepancies through collective review or contacting authors directly.

Protocol Study

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION................................................................................................................................3
Methods ..........................................................................................................................................3
Eligibility of Articles and Article Selection.....................................................................................4
Inclusion Criteria.............................................................................................................................5
Exclusion Criteria............................................................................................................................5
Protocol for Abstract/ Title Screening.............................................................................................5
Protocol for Full Text Review..........................................................................................................6
Quality Analysis...............................................................................................................................6
Data extraction ................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES.....................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Sub-Saharan Africa is the hardest hit region which accounts to nearly 89% of total deaths
caused due to various communicable and non-communicable disease every year. The
epidemiological data of Sub-Saharan Africa in 2015 reported that 92% of death are caused due to
malaria and 75% and 30% of death toll rises due to AIDS and tuberculosis respectively. The severe
human and socio-economic impacts are responsible for these diseases (Egger, Ekouevi and Dabis,
2012). As a result businesses are experiencing shortage of skilled workers and families are losing
their members because AIDS/HIV and tuberculosis affects individuals in the productive years of
their life.
The Sub-Saharan Africa has successfully battled malarial parasites and tuberculosis in the
recent time but the increasing rate of AIDS in African individuals have increased the death toll in
recent years. Due to insufficient funds and healthcare facilities, diseases have become more
challenging. Even if progress is made against a particular disease, they develop the abilities to
rebound in later stages of life. There are various other reasons which are responsible for
complicating these diseases in Sub-Saharan Africa (Deeks, Lewin and Havlir, 2013). They are weak
and insufficient healthcare systems, shortage of health professionals and prevention efforts.
It is important to increase the facilities of healthcare in order to strengthen the ways to tackle
infectious and non-infectious diseases effectively.
Review objective
To systematically examine the abstractive framework for the analysis of the impact of HIV/AIDS
epidemic on the reproductive behaviour of individuals residing in Sub-Saharan Africa. The analysis
will be based on different array of empirical data obtained through researches and various
qualitative and quantitative studies.
Methods
Article Identification
The objectives of the ongoing study will be met by searching various healthcare articles such as
PubMed, Web-MD, Medline, Global health library, Google scholar, Emerald insight.
TERM 1 HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa
TERM 2 ELISA for AIDS
TERM 3 Chronic and epidemic disease.
TERM 4 Viral infections and STD's
TERM 5 T-cells and HIV infection

Articles and database selected. Description about the database.
PubMed PubMed contains more than 30 million literatures on
various healthcare issues. The database also gives access to
links and abstracts as well (Freeman, Semeere and Jaquet,
2016).
Web-MD Web-MD provides access to all the content in the article
which includes articles on paediatric, geriatrics, AIDS/HIV
malaria, tuberculosis and various epidemic diseases
(Homsy, Balaba and Kabatesi, 2015).
Medline Medline included more than 20 million literatures on
biomedical science and health science. The online version
of Medline provides bibliographic databases supporting
biological framework and research.
Global health library It is one the most renowned databases which provides
access to all the information without any subscription. It
includes data in both print and online form (Deeks, Lewin
and Havlir, 2013).
Google scholar Google scholar is one of the online freely accessible
databases that provides both physical and digital
publications of various articles. It has a wide variety of
database which includes health and disease, mental and
physiological health (Jost and Altfeld, 2013).
Emerald insight Emerald group publishing limited is one of the common
publisher of academic journals and articles which covers the
field of business management, health and social care,
education and engineering (Egger, Ekouevi and Dabis,
2012).
Eligibility of Articles and Article Selection
All the articles which are selected for study will be examined and assessed independently by
2 different reviewers. They will broadly determine the title and abstractive research based on the

inclusion criteria (Kuo, Casale and Lane, 2014). The another review of the selected articles will be
based on thorough understanding of the information by observer. Further, to meet all the inclusion
criteria the articles will be reviewed additionally. In case of any query or error in the article, the
researcher is liable to contact the particular author of the selected article.
Inclusion Criteria.
Design: Various studies and research have been adopted for completing the protocol study on
prevalence of HIV/AIDS in Sub-Saharan Africa. These studies are case control, cohort , literature
review, qualitative analysis (Li, 2014). These studies are conducted in order to determine the
relative frequency of individuals affected by HIV/AIDS in Sub Saharan Africa (Egger, Ekouevi and
Dabis, 2012).
Rationale: The statistical and epidemiological data of people suffering from exist but due to
scarcity in resources and techniques in sub- Saharan Africa the research and protocol studies are left
incomplete (Pathai, Lawn and Bekker, 2013).
Outcomes: The outcomes of the research includes the determination and examination of ELISA
test, neutrophil and basophil count, stages of viral infection, AIDS and its symptoms, decrease and
increase in albumin levels, urine clearance rate, thyroid and serum levels (Deeks, Lewin and Havlir,
2013).
Definitions: Search terms and keywords such as immuno sorbent assay, HIV progression, Chronic
HIV infection, Nucleoside reverse trancriptase inhibitor (Homsy, Balaba and Kabatesi, 2015).
Participants: The participants who are selected for the protocol study should be limited from the
healthy population of sub-Saharan Africa. The selected individual should not include out patients,
diabetic, HIV, pregnant ladies and hospitalized individuals (Egger, Ekouevi and Dabis, 2012).
Exclusion Criteria.
According to the exclusion criteria, researcher have excluded all the articles which were
irrelevant or unnecessary. The examiner also eliminated all those databases and articles which were
not printed or published in proficient English language (Homsy, Balaba and Kabatesi, 2015). The
criteria for including different article was to select all the recently published articles on HIV/AIDS
in sub-Saharan Africa. Articles which were printed after the year 2005 were also excluded from the
study. The exclusion criteria assist in selecting and eliminating all the unwanted articles and
journals which are not significant for the research work (Pathai, Lawn and Bekker, 2013).
Protocol for Abstract/ Title Screening
Based on the above inclusion criteria, 5 questions have been formulated in title and abstract

screening process. If the answers to all the questions are answered satisfactorily, then the article will
be included for further reviewing. Question for the title and abstractive research are mentioned
below
Does the protocol study and participants included in the study belongs to sub-Saharan Africa?
Is any individual in the study less than the age of 18 years? Are pregnant ladies also included in the
cohort study? (Egger, Ekouevi and Dabis, 2012).
Does the designed study meets the above mentioned inclusion criteria?
Does the article provide epidemiological data and relative frequency of HIV/AIDS infected
individuals? (Deeks, Lewin and Havlir, 2013).
Is there any rationale postulate formulated for reporting the numbers of individuals diagnosed with
HIV/AIDS, viral infection and other health issues in sub-Saharan Africa?
Protocol for Full Text Review
After considering the inclusion criteria, different questions based on yes/no have been
formed for full text review (Egger, Ekouevi and Dabis, 2012). If first and second question of the
abstract are answered as yes, then the article will be included in the process of data extraction. If the
third question is also answered as yes then, the article will be excluded from inclusion criteria.
 Does the patient's population and study approach matches all the inclusion criteria as
answered in abstract/ title screening? (Pathai, Lawn and Bekker, 2013).
 Does the article report possible data of non infected individuals and non-pregnant females?
 Is the study based on case control criteria in which people infected with AIDS, and other
sexually transmitted disease are selected? If yes, then the following article needs to be
eliminated from the study (Homsy, Balaba and Kabatesi, 2015).
Quality Analysis
Each chosen article will be separately assessed for quality purpose with the help of various
clinical and methodological ways in order to determine various results of the study effectively
(Deeks, Lewin and Havlir, 2013). Questions which are included to analyse the quality are internal
and external validity, sampling methods, members of selected population, accurate and precise
source of determining the disease and adequate ability should be included in quality analysis of
prevalence studies. According to literature and different methodological standards several series of
questions were altered so that the issue and errors related to quality are addressed in the best
possible way (Egger, Ekouevi and Dabis, 2012).

Data extraction
After selecting and characterizing different articles for inclusion criteria, Two different
authors will independently examine all the articles which are used for data extraction. The articles
will contain standard and pre-formulated forms. The standard form is a study which determines
study structure, population and participants included in the study, size of the study, statistical data of
patients, study dates, terminology related to sexual health and diseases (Homsy, Balaba and
Kabatesi, 2015). Epidemiological and statistical data of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa is also
represented such as rate of incidence due to sexually communicable disease in a specific area,
relative and absolute frequency of individuals infected with HIV/AIDS, adolescent pregnancies and
other transmitted infections. Errors during the process of data extraction will be resolved by the
collective review of all the articles. If necessary, authors of all the articles will be contacted in
person (Pathai, Lawn and Bekker, 2013).

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Deeks, S.G., Lewin, S.R. and Havlir, D.V., 2013. The end of AIDS: HIV infection as a chronic
disease. The Lancet. 382(9903). pp.1525-1533.
Egger, M., Ekouevi, D.K. and Dabis, F., 2012. Cohort Profile: The international epidemiological
databases to evaluate AIDS (IeDEA) in sub-Saharan Africa. International journal of
epidemiology. 41(5). pp.1256-1264.
Freeman, E., Semeere, A. and Jaquet, A., 2016. Pitfalls of practicing cancer epidemiology in
resource-limited settings: the case of survival and loss to follow-up after a diagnosis of
Kaposi’s sarcoma in five countries across sub-Saharan Africa. BMC cancer. 16(1). pp.12-15.
Homsy, J., King, R., Balaba, D. and Kabatesi, D., 2015. Traditional health practitioners are key to
scaling up comprehensive care for HIV/AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa. AIDS. 18. pp.1723-1725.
Jost, S. and Altfeld, M., 2013. Control of human viral infections by natural killer cells. Immunology.
31(1). p.163.
Kuo, C., Casale, M. and Lane, T., 2014. Cumulative effects of HIV illness and caring for children
orphaned by AIDS on anxiety symptoms among adults caring for children in HIV-endemic
south africa. AIDS patient care and STDs. 28(6). pp.318-326.
Li, H., 2014. AIDS Imaging and Evidence Based Medicine. In Radiology of HIV/AIDS. Springer
Netherlands.
Pathai, S., Lawn, S.D. and Bekker, L.G., 2013. Accelerated biological ageing in HIV-infected
individuals in South Africa: a case–control study. AIDS. 27(15). pp.2375-2384.