The family's role as a support network for people living with HIV/AIDS: a review of Brazilian research into the theme.

The study of HIV transmission and the implementation of AIDS prevention actions recognize the importance of social networks in the transmission of the disease, the adherence to treatment and the quality of life of those infected. For this relevance there was a review of articles on social support networks to people living with HIV /AIDS available in the Virtual Health Library (VHL) were published in Brazil between 2002 and 2012. In this study 31 articles were used from journals covering the following áreas: Nursing (n = 15), Psychology (n = 6) and Science Health / Biomedica (n = 6), were included, which some principal authors were affiliated to higher education public institutions (n = 17). In relation to the methodology used, priority wasgiven to conducting: qualitative research (n = 18), cross-sectional studies (n = 19) and studies that involved talking to people living with HIV/AIDS (n = 13). Particular importance was placed on analytic categories related to: adherence to treatment (n = 6), the family (n = 4), vulnerability (n = 3) and support from social networks (n = 5). Within this paper we argue for more investments into studies that focus on the family, carers and their households, as well as deepening the theoretical study of the themes discussed and the use of developed theories for the analysis of Social Networks.