Health-related quality of life in Thai children with allergic respiratory diseases.

BACKGROUND Childhood asthma and allergic rhinitis (AR) are major chronic respiratory diseases affecting health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Few school-based studies have reported the HRQOL of individuals with asthma or AR. OBJECTIVE The study measured HRQOL among primary school pupils with asthma, AR and both diseases combined in Thailand. MATERIAL AND METHOD Two thousand and eight school pupils, aged 6-9 years, from six primary schools were randomly studied. The self-reported Pediatric Quality of Life Inventory Core Scales (PedsQL) questionnaires were used to evaluate pupils' HRQOL in their classrooms. The parent-reported PedsQL questionnaires and the parent-reported International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood (ISAAC) written questionnaire were sent to their parents to evaluate pupils' HRQOL and identify asthma and AR respectively. RESULTS One thousand nine hundred and twenty-four of 2,008 (95.8%) pupils completed the self-reported PedsQL questionnaire and 1,789/2,008 (89.1%) parent-reported questionnaires were returned for analysis. By child self-reports, asthmatic pupils with or without AR had significant impairment in all domains of PedsQL questionnaire (p ≤ 0.049) compared to healthy pupils. Pupils with combined asthma and AR had significantly lower summary (p = 0.015) and emotional functioning mean scores (p = 0.001) than pupils with AR alone. By parent-reports, pupils with asthma alone, AR alone, and combined diseases had significant impairment in emotional functioning (p ≤ 0.047), compared to healthy pupils. CONCLUSION Allergic respiratory diseases significantly reduced HRQOL in Thai school pupils, especially for emotional functioning. AR alone minimal impairs HRQOL while asthma with or without AR significantly reduce HRQOL in all domains.