[The association between allergic rhinitis control and sleep quality]

Allergic rhinitis (AR) is the most common form of atopic disease, comprising 50% of atopic diseases. Recently, this disease has increasingly been the focus of intensive research. Previous work has shown that AR has a significant impact on sleep quality. To date there are no published studies demonstrating a quantitative association between the extent of control of AR and the severity of compromised sleep quality.

Patients with AR were prospectively recruited into our cross-sectional study. Sleep quality was assessed using five of the sleep subdomain questions from the 22-item Sinonasal Outcome Test (SNOT-22). Control of AR was assessed using the Rhinitis Control Assessment Test (RCAT). Association was sought between the degree of allergic rhinitis control (RCAT) as independent variable and sleep quality as dependent variable using linear regression.

A total of 104 patients (54.8% female and 45.2% male) with an average age of 41.4 years (SD: 15.9 years) were included in the study. There were statistically significant associations between the RCAT score and the score of each of the five SNOT-22 questions used to assess decreased sleep quality (p < 0.001). These associations remained significant (p < 0.001) even after controlling participants' clinical and demographic characteristics.

This is the first study showing that level of control of AR correlates with the severity of subjectively perceived sleep quality detriment. These results indicate that an improvement in AR control could lead to improved subjective sleep quality but a prospective interventional study is needed to confirm these results.