The patient’s hay-fever diary: three years of results from Germany

New European Academy of Allergy and Clinical Immunology definition on pollen season mirrors symptom load for grass and birch pollen‐induced allergic rhinitis

“…The number of symptom reports throughout the pollen season is highly variable: The mean number of PHD users (rounded to the closest integer) reporting symptoms is 84 for year 2014, 147 for year 2015, and 272 for year 2016. The PHD was developed taking into account the European Medicines Agency guidelines and allows for the structured and continuous reporting of pollen‐induced symptoms and relevant medication use by allergy sufferers, being available in a variety of European languages . In the following, we report data on nasal symptoms, which are predominant in allergic patients throughout the season …”

The grass pollen season 2014 in Vienna: A pilot study combining phenology, aerobiology and symptom data

“…This pollen diary is a highly practicable tool for scientists and pollen allergy sufferers Karatzas et al, 2013;Voukantsis et al, 2013). The access is possible via the following website (https://www.pollendiary.com) or the "Pollen" mobile application in Austria .…”

Defining pollen exposure times for clinical trials of allergen immunotherapy for pollen‐induced rhinoconjunctivitis – an EAACI position paper

“…However, it is known that grass pollen-allergic patients have more severe symptoms in the early pollen season compared to the late season at similar grass pollen concentrations, likely due to a 'priming effect' due to early exposures lowering the pollen threshold for the occurrence of subsequent symptoms (51,52).…”

“…www.pollendiary.com, www.allergieradar.nl). The opportunities to study high numbers of participants provided already valuable information about the impact of pollen concentrations on the kind and severity of symptoms (52)(53)(54). The influence of other factors, for example weather factors (wind, rain, etc.)…”

“…The selection of the amounts of different pollen was based on existing threshold values for symptom development (14), the comparison between pollen data from the European Aeroallergen Network (EAN) database (https://ean.polleninfo.eu/) and 'reallife' data as reported by patients using the online patient's hay-fever diary (https://www.pollendiary.com/) and the Pollen App 4.1 (https://www.pollenwarndienst.at/de/gratis-polle n-app.html) to document their actual (daily) symptoms on eyes, nose and bronchi during pollen exposure within the season (19,52). As such, these definitions have been elaborated by the TF experts based on data belonging to central and southern Europe, well knowing that values used in the definitions might need adaptation to different biogeographical regions.…”