Background: Despite an increasing global prevalence of childhood allergies and asthma, awareness has not been given much priority to date. We wanted to investigate whether the personal experience of allergic diseases is associated with awareness among Indian adolescents.

Methods: Using the data of the PERFORMANCE study¹, we constructed a structural equation model (SEM) to determine the associations between experience of allergy or asthma (a 3-item latent variable symptom among parents, siblings, and friends) and awareness of allergy or asthma (a 5-item latent variable of allergy and asthma-related information). We further performed a multi-group SEM to test the associations stratified by sex.

Results: We retrieved data from 680 adolescents (13-14 years). 51% were boys and 12% reported parental symptoms. In multivariable analyses adjusted for maternal education and smoker in the family, the SEM showed that allergy experience was associated with a lower awareness (coefficient: -0.25; 95% confidence interval: -0.40, -0.11) among Indian adolescents and the association was lower among girls (-0.34; -0.58; -0.09) compared to boys (-0.14; -0.35, 0.05).

Conclusion: Our results of an inverse relationship between experience with allergic diseases and awareness strongly warrant the need for more education on asthma and allergic diseases, particularly among girls.

References: ¹PMID: 29977901;232665950