Alopecia Areata-Quality of Life Index Questionnaire (Reliability and Validity of the Persian Version) in Comparison to Dermatology Life Quality Index

BACKGROUND: Alopecia areata (AA) is an autoimmune disease with an incidence of 2% globally and plays a key role in the quality of life (QOL) of patients with AA. It has been recently shown that there are no sufficient disease-specific questionnaires to assess the QOL in patients with AA. AIMS: This study tried to evaluate the validity and reliability of the Persian version of AA-Quality of Life Index (AA-QLI) and compare it with the Dermatology Life Quality Index (DLQI) questionnaire. MATERIALS AND METHODS: During 1 year, 100 individuals were enrolled in this study and asked to complete the DLQI questionnaire and AA-QLI questionnaire. First of all, we enrolled 25 individuals for evaluating the validity of the Persian version of the questionnaire, and after achieving the proper validity, 75 additional patients were enrolled in this project. RESULTS: The results showed that the test had an appropriate validity (P < 0.001, R = 0.76), reliability (P < 0.001 , internal stability R = 0.89), and (α = 0.91). In this study, we observed that the scores of both questionnaires are quite close. In this regard, in both questionnaires, females had higher scores in comparison to males (P = 0.03), and also both of them correlated with age, age of onset of disease, and skin involvement percentage. CONCLUSIONS: The Persian version of the AA-QLI questionnaire is valid and reliable. The QOL of AA patients needs to be considered more seriously. Psychological evaluation of patients is one of the important suggestions in this study.