Embodied accounts of HIV and hope: using audio diaries with interviews.

Capturing the complexity of the experience of chronic illness over time presents significant methodological and ethical challenges. In this article, we present methodological and substantive insights from a longitudinal qualitative study with 20 people living with HIV in Serbia. We used both repeated in-depth interviews and audio diaries to explore the role of hope in coping with and managing HIV. Using thematic longitudinal analysis, we found that the audio diaries produced distinctive, embodied accounts that straddled the public/private divide and engaged with alternative social scripts of illness experience. We suggest that this enabled less socially anticipated accounts of coping, hoping, and distress to be spoken and shared. We argue that examining the influence of different methods on accounting not only illustrates the value of qualitative mixed-method study designs but also provides crucial insights to better understand the lived experience of chronic illness.

"You should be grateful to have medicines": continued dependence, altering stigma and the HIV treatment experience in Serbia.

The expectation that universal HIV treatment access in resource-stretched settings will reduce stigma is a powerful aspiration that has been incorporated into a global rhetoric of hope around the HIV pandemic. Between 2005 and 2007, we undertook qualitative longitudinal research with people living with HIV/AIDS (PLHIV) in Serbia. We draw here upon the thematic analysis of prospective interview accounts of 20 individuals to analyse PLHIV's perceptions of the influence of HIV treatment upon their quality of life. HIV is one of few conditions in Serbia where its treatment is fully funded by the state. Inconsistent treatment delivery means HIV treatment is experienced as insecure. Competitive claims for stretched national resources interplay with a moral economy which sees PLHIV as "undeserving" citizens. The guilt and anxiety felt by PLHIV intersect with severely curtailed employment opportunities, which weaken the anticipated restorative and empowering properties embedded within the promise of universal HIV treatment access. Rationed expectations of patient or system instigated change mean PLHIV's efforts are orientated towards short-term individualised self-care, drawing on bureaucratic technologies to mediate their uncertainty. These factors integrate to create a specific cultural and historical context for an altered but continuing stigma towards PLHIV in this era of treatment. This case study cautions against neglecting the underlying structural process of stigmatisation that constrains the capacity of PLHIV to participate in anti-stigma and community organising activities, indicating that in this setting HIV treatment is insufficient alone to reduce stigma or enable major social and economic change in the everyday lives of PLHIV.

Ocular rosacea and treatment of symptomatic Helicobacter pylori infection: a case series.

Rosacea is a chronic inflammatory skin disease characterized by recurrent episodes of facial flushing, erythema, papules, pustules, and telangiectasia. More than half of all rosacea patients may have ocular symptoms. Rosacea is associated with certain digestive diseases, such as gastritis, hypochlorhydria, or a number of jejunal mucosal abnormalities, and many patients have Helicobacter pylori infection. The role of Helicobacter pylori has often been a subject of investigation; these studies show conflicting results. Here we present results of the effects of treatment given for H. pylori eradication in seven patients with ocular rosacea that, at the same time, had clinical and serological evidence of H. pylori infection. Six weeks after completion of the treatment, all patients experienced improvement of their rosacea symptoms. Ocular disease responded better than cutaneous rosacea.