Development of the BELANA questionnaire for the analysis of economic burdens of food allergy and intolerance

Introduction: Patients affected by food allergies and intolerance need to apply dedicated avoidance strategies and also prevent the consequences of unbalanced diets. In most countries, the health economic costs for these patients are unknown. Methods: To measure temporal and financial burdens of the patients in multinational settings, the BELANA questionnaire (Burdens and Expenses of Living as an Adult with Nutrition based Allergy or Intolerance) has been developed. For the complementary measurement of Health Related Quality of Life (HR-QoL), a combined appliance of the disease-specific FAQLQ-AF (Food Allergy Quality of Life Questionnaire – Adult Form) and the generic SF-12v1 (Short Form-12 Health Survey) has been chosen. Results: BELANA collects six economic items while avoiding questions, which are already included in the HR-QoL questionnaires or could lead to denial tendencies. In a web-based pilot survey with 51 patients, the practicability of using BELANA together with the complementary quality of life instruments was investigated. The electronic data collection offers real time plausibility checks and limits the workload for completion and data evaluation. Discussion: The response rates at BELANA health-economic items (76 – 100%) and the high amount of completed questionnaires (50 of 51) confirm the patients acceptance of the chosen methodology. Within the web-based survey, the combination of BELANA, FAQLQ-AF and SF-12v1 was completed in an average of 22 minutes. An age-related selection bias was not been confirmed in this pilot application. The median age in the pilot trial was 37.9 years (minimum age to participate was 18 years, range from 19 to 72 years, Standard Deviation (SD) = 12.4 years). Most of the participants were female (44 of 50). Conclusion: It is assumed that the BELANA questionnaire should be a useful tool for the evaluation of health-economic burden for patients with food allergy and intolerance.