Assessment of quality of life in Iranian asthmatic children, young adults and their caregivers.

Interest in the impact of illness on day to day function is leading investigators to include both disease specific and generic health related quality of life (HR QOL) questionnaires in a broad range of clinical studies and to gain a full picture of the impact of asthma on the lives of children with this condition, it is necessary to make direct measurement of health related quality of life. In response to this need, we used the Juniper's pediatric asthma quality of life questionnaire (PAQLQ) and Juniper's Pediatric Asthma Caregiver's Quality of Life Questionnaire (PACQLQ) that has been developed based on guidelines for construction of over a dozen validated disease specific quality of life instruments. The PAQLQ consists of 23 items that in children with asthma have been identified as troublesome in their daily lives and PACQLQ that contains 13 items in two domains of emotional and activities disturbances. The study design consisted of an 18 month single cohort study. Patients participating in the study were 113 children, 7-17 years of age, with a wide range of asthma severity and their caregivers. For each patient a PAQLQ and for each caregiver a PACQLQ was completed. One week before visit patients recorded morning peak flow rates, medication use and symptoms in a diary. After complete physical examination, for determining of asthma severity, spirometry was performed. The questionnaires after statically analysis showed good levels of both longitudinal and cross sectional correlations with the conventional asthma indices and with general quality of life. We found that consistently QOL in boys were more disturbed than females, a good relevancy between severity of asthma and QOL scores and more disturbances of QOL in caregivers of male asthmatic patients than caregivers of female asthmatic patients. We could not find any significant relevancy between FEV1 percentage of predicted and overall scores of QOL. Smaller airways, and higher airway resistance and more activity of males than females may explain why boys have more disturbed life style than females.