Animal assisted intervention for oncology and palliative care patients: A systematic review.

INTRODUCTION: Animal assisted interventions (AAI) have been used in different contexts including oncology/palliative care and can improve mood, quality of life and wellness. The goal of this review was to evaluate studies about AAI and its effects on oncological/palliative care patients. METHODS: The search was conducted on PubMed, Scopus and Lilacs databases. The inclusion criteria were original articles that measured quantitatively the health-related outcomes of an AAI on oncological/palliative care patients. RESULTS: Ten studies fulfilled the inclusion criteria. Benefits related to the AAI were described. Mood, pain perception and quality of life seemed to be the variables that had improvement with the intervention. Due to the small sample sizes/heterogeneous methodologies, additional analyses could not be performed. CONCLUSIONS: AAI can be an important tool for improving psychosocial/physiological parameters in cancer/palliative care patients. Further well designed studies are needed to provide a better knowledge of the AAI benefits in this setting.

Tuberculosis incidence in patients with human immunodeficiency virus, treated with isoniazid for latent tuberculosis infection

Tuberculosis is the leading cause of death amongst adults with human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) infection. The lifetime risk of tuberculosis disease for a person with latent infection is estimated at 5-10% with most cases occurring within five years of initial infection. The World Health Organization recommends isoniazid preventive therapy (IPT) for latent tuberculosis treatment, amongst other strategies. The aim was to assess tuberculosis incidence, survival (free of tuberculosis) and associated factors in HIV-positive patients. IPT was offered to participants with a positive (≥5mm) tuberculin skin test. Participants were followed from February 2003-December 2016. Kaplan-Meier was used for survival analysis. Variables with p-value ≤ 0.2 in the univariate analysis entered into the multivariate Cox-Model, keeping those with p-value ≤ 0.05. The 95% confidence interval of incidence of tuberculosis was estimated using Poisson distribution. One hundred nineteen patients completed the IPT and were followed for a median duration of 110.7 months (IQR 93.1-121.0). The probability of developing tuberculosis (10 years post-IPT) was 5.4%. Tuberculosis incidence was 0.58/100 patient/years (CI 95% 0.213-1.264). IPT over 6 months provided long-term protection against tuberculosis. AIDS-defining illness was the only statistically significant variable (HR=5.67) in the multivariate model.