Quality of life among caregivers and growth in children with parent-reported food allergy.

BACKGROUND Some caregivers who believe their children have food allergy avoid feeding certain foods to their children without proper allergy tests. Such actions made without a proper diagnosis can negatively impact the child's health and impose an unnecessary burden on the caregivers. OBJECTIVE This study aimed to evaluate the caregiver quality of life (QoL) and growth in children with a parent-reported food allergy. METHODS An observational cross-sectional study was performed in 200 children younger than five years who had a parent-reported food allergy. The caregivers' QoL was evaluated by two questionnaires: the Food Allergy Quality of Life -Parental Burden and the Scale of Psychosocial Factors in Food Allergy. Growth of the children was evaluated by their weight-for-age and length/height-for-age percentiles. RESULTS Among the caregivers, 50% expressed worry that their children might be allergic to some foods and 30% were concerned about leaving their children in the care of others. According to the QoL scores, caregivers whose children underwent an oral food challenge (OFC) test were significantly less stressed, while caregivers whose children had multiple food allergies and had experienced at least one anaphylactic reaction were significantly more stressed. The distributions of both weight-for-age and length/height-for-age percentiles were 50th comparable to the general population. CONCLUSIONS Parent-reported food allergy could put caregivers under high stress, but the OFC test could reduce stress among anxious, over-parenting caregivers. Parent-reported food allergy had no impact on a child's growth in our study.