Prevalence of allergic rhinitis in Italy according to general practitioners and mailed epidemiological surveys.

摘要

In the AllergyNet of the May issue of Allergy, Mantovani el al. (I) reported that in 2003 the prevalence of allergic rhinitis in Italy amounted to 4.5%, based on the national database of general practitioners. As acknowledged by the Authors themselves, this figure is much lower than the prevalence estimates recorded by questionnaire-based surveys. Indeed, in people aged 20-45 years from Northern Italy, prevalence of allergic rhinitis was 15.9% according to the European Community Respiratory Health Survey (ECRHS) in 1991-93 (2) and had increased to 18.3% by the end of the 1990s (3). In the nine centres participating in the Italian Study on Asthma in Young Adults (ISAYA), prevalence of allergic rhinitis varied between 13.5% and 23.6% (median 18.9%) in 1998-2000 (4, 5).