Adverse Reactions to Foods and Food Allergy: Development and Reproducibility of a Questionnaire for Clinical Diagnosis

Abstract

Objective. To develop a questionnaire as a screening tool for adverse reactions to foods in children and to assess the technical reproducibility by test-retest. Methods. Reproducibility of the questionnaire was performed by the literature review, preparing the preliminary questionnaire, peer review, pretest, and retest analysis. The study of the test-retest reproducibility was cross-sectional and descriptive. Kappa coefficient was used to study the reproducibility of the questionnaire. The sample consisted of 125 2–4 year-old children from 15 daycare centers in Recife, Brazil, and interviews with parents or caregivers were used to collect data. Results. From the total children, sixty-three were boys (50.4%), forty-six were two years old (36.8%), forty-seven were three years old (37.6%), and thirty-two were four years old (25.6%). Forty caregivers reported that their child had health problems with food. Most frequently reported offending foods were milk, peanuts, shrimp, and chocolate. Nine questions showed a good Kappa index (≥0,6). Conclusions. The questionnaire used needs to be resized and reshaped on the basis of the issues with good internal consistency and reproducibility. The use of a validated and reproducible questionnaire in the children represents an important contribution towards assessing an eventual rise in overt food allergy.

Adult Food Allergy Prevalence: Reducing Questionnaire Bias

“…This questionnaire provided more detailed questions about the food involved in the FA reaction, associated symptoms, the time between food intake and the onset of the FA reaction, the reproducibility of the symptoms, and food exclusion in the daily diet (online suppl. Table S2) as previously described [4,5]. These questions were geared toward building up a clinical history, and a possible diagnosis of FA was considered if the replies met all of the following 3 criteria: the reaction symptoms started within 2 h of ingestion of the food implicated, the reaction was reproducible, and the food was excluded from the daily diet.…”

Development of a screening questionnaire for the study of food allergy in adults

“…Its design was based upon specific principles, as defined by a panel of experts in line with principles previously used in other publications using questionnaires in other fields of study, 16 , 17 , 18 as well as taking into account Portuguese 19 and European guidelines. 20 It was also based upon a questionnaire previously applied to children with food allergies, 21 with an adequate sample size calculated in accordance with appropriate recommendations. 22 , 23 The questionnaire aimed at screening for the presence of adverse food reactions and their risk factors.…”

“…In addition, the experts also suggested modifications deemed as relevant, proposed the inclusion of new aspects and reviewed semantics as well, in a procedure similar to that previously performed by Lyra et al. 21 The questionnaire was then converted into a Google Docs format in order to facilitate collection of data via a phone call.…”

Prevalence and clinical features of adverse food reactions in Portuguese children

“…An initial, screening questionnaire about AFR (Q1), containing questions about sociodemographic aspects, the previous occurrence and identification of food associated with the adverse reaction, was filled out by parents. When at least one food was identified as a potential trigger for a previous AFR, a second, previously tested, analysed for cross cultural validation [ 12 ] and more comprehensive questionnaire (Q2) was applied by the researchers to fully characterize reactions (Additional file 1 ). When Q1 and Q2 were both positive, SPT were performed and suspected food-specific IgE levels were determined.…”