Development and validation of the Food Allergy Quality of Life Questionnaire – Adult Form

Abstract

The FAQLQ-AF is the first disease-specific HRQL questionnaire for food allergic adults and reflects the most important issues that food allergic patients have to face. The questionnaire is valid, reliable and discriminates between patients with different disease characteristics. The FAQLQ-AF is short and easy to use and may therefore be a useful tool in clinical research.

Effects of food allergy on the dietary habits and intake of primary schools’ Cypriot children

“…An elimination diet creates an emerging need for alternative sources of all basic macro-and micronutrients, as the diet of food allergic children is in several cases found low in energy, protein, calcium, vitamins D and E, iron and zinc (4), due to inappropriate food exclusions and follow-up after diagnosis of food allergies, but also refusal of food allergic children to try new foods (5), resulting to rickets, kwashiorkor, anaemia and failure to thrive in long-term (6). Furthermore, without appropriate dietary education on the everyday management (i.e allergen labelling, alternative foods) (7), psychosocial problems arise (8,9) due to high levels of anxiety associated with a potential accidental reaction (5). The current study aims to identify the effect of food allergy on dietary habits and intake of food allergic in comparison to healthy primary school Cypriot children.…”

Disease‐specific health‐related quality of life instruments for IgE‐mediated food allergy

“…Cross-sectional validity was assessed through the evaluation of its construct validity, convergent and discriminant validity, discriminative ability and reliability. Assessment of this tool demonstrated a good correlation between FAQLQ-AF and FAIM (q = 0.76, P ≤ 0.001) with internal consistency (Cronbach's a = 0.97) (25).…”

“…Three papers were reviewed for the development and validation of the FAQLQ-AF in this systematic review (10,24,25). The intended population for the questionnaire was patients over the age of 18 years and is a self-report; it contains 29 items and four domains.…”

Systematic literature review and evaluation of patient reported outcome measures (PROMs) for asthma and related allergic diseases

“…It does appear that patients find PROMs acceptable in terms of time and effort: research by members of our team, administering HRQL questionnaires in an outpatient allergy clinic setting, identified very high response rates in children (73-94%) and adults (80-86%) and little questionnaire fatigue. [15][16][17] The intended use of PROMs by patients to inform effective choices in health care services requires further examination, 10,13 particularly in relation to informed decision-making and health literacy. 18 Asthma and related allergic disorders affect up to one in three of the UK population at some point in their lives, and are responsible for considerable morbidity and in some cases mortality.…”

“…The proposed research will identify currently available PROMs for use by patients with allergic disease and make recommendations on whether -and, if so, how -these can be adapted for use in clinical and research settings. There are wellestablished PROMs for eczema, asthma, and allergic rhinitis, urticaria, food and venom allergy; [15][16][17][23][24][25][26][27][28][29] a range of other less wellknown measures for various allergic conditions; 30,31 and generic measures such as the SF36 and EQ5D 32,33 are also used. We will build on existing work in this field.…”