Quality of life in patients with anogenital warts.

Background: Anogenital warts (GW) are among the most common sexually transmitted diseases. Few studies have investigated the quality of life (QoL) of GW patients. Objective: We undertook an exhaustive description of the health status of GW patients and assessed disease impact on QoL. Methods: GW patients enrolled at the Sexually Transmitted Diseases service of Rome Catholic University were administered the SF-36 questionnaire to assess health status, the Skindex-29 to evaluate the impact of dermatological aspects and the GHQ-12 questionnaire to identify patients with probable minor psychiatric non-psychotic conditions. Clinical severity was assessed with the Physician Global Assessment (PGA) and through quantitative measures. Results: There was a significant association between greater disease severity and lower SF-36 values (reflecting a worse QoL). The severity parameters showed no significant differences in any of the Skindex-29 scales except for Emotions, which showed higher values (reflecting a worse QoL) in patients with severe disease assessed by PGA. The GHQ-positive patients (23.7%) consistently showed worse QoL scores on all the SF-36 scales and on all the Skindex-29 scales compared to GHQ-negative patients. Conclusions: To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study of the impact of GW on QoL to use a range of validated tools, both generic and dermatology-specific. We observed a strong influence of GW on the mental and physical components of QoL in terms of general health status (SF-36). The effects in terms of specific dermatological aspects (Skindex-29) were less significant, but still reflected an impact on patients' emotional state.