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- Title
Translating the Burden of Pollen Allergy Into Numbers Using Electronically Generated Symptom Data From the Patient's Hayfever Diary in Austria and Germany: 10-Year Observational Study.
- Authors
Bastl, Katharina; Bastl, Maximilian; Bergmann, Karl-Christian; Berger, Markus; Berger, Uwe
- Abstract
<bold>Background: </bold>Pollen allergies affect a significant proportion of the population globally. At present, Web-based tools such as pollen diaries and mobile apps allow for easy and fast documentation of allergic symptoms via the internet.<bold>Objective: </bold>This study aimed to characterize the users of the Patient's Hayfever Diary (PHD), a Web-based platform and mobile app, to apply different symptom score calculations for comparison, and to evaluate the contribution of organs and medications to the total score for the first time.<bold>Methods: </bold>The PHD users were filtered with regard to their location in Austria and Germany, significant positive correlation to the respective pollen type (birch/grass), and at least 15 entries in the respective season. Furthermore, 4 different symptom score calculation methods were applied to the datasets from 2009 until 2018, of which 2 were raw symptom scores and 2 were symptom load index (normalized) calculations. Pearson correlation coefficients were calculated pairwise for these 4 symptom score calculations.<bold>Results: </bold>Users were mostly male and belonged to the age groups of 21 to 40 years or >40 years. User numbers have increased in the last 5 years, especially when mobile apps were made available. The Pearson correlation coefficients showed a significant linear relationship above 0.9 among the 4 symptom score datasets and thus indicated no significant difference between the different methods of symptom score calculation. The nose contributed the most to the symptom score and determined about 40% of the score.<bold>Conclusions: </bold>The exact method of calculation of the symptom score is not critical. All computation methods show the same behavior (increase/decrease during the season). Therefore, the symptom load index is a useful computation method in all fields exploring pollen allergy, and Web-based diaries are a globally applicable tool to monitor the effect of pollen on human health via electronically generated symptom data.
- Subjects
AUSTRIA; GERMANY; ALLERGIC rhinitis; PEARSON correlation (Statistics); SCIENTIFIC observation; MOBILE apps; MOBILE operating systems; POLLEN; TIME; SEASONAL variations of diseases
- Publication
Journal of Medical Internet Research, 2020, Vol 22, Issue 2, pN.PAG
- ISSN
1439-4456
- Publication type
journal article
- DOI
10.2196/16767