Limited health literacy and its associated health outcomes among adults with at least two atopic diseases
Background: Health literacy is essential for patients with multiple atopic diseases to improve their health, given the complexity of their disease and treatment regimens.
Objective: To estimate the proportion of adults with multiple atopic diseases (at least two of atopic dermatitis (AD), asthma, allergic rhinitis, and food allergy) in the Dutch general population, and to evaluate the prevalence of limited health literacy, and its association with socioeconomic status (SES), lifestyle factors, and health-related quality of life (HR-QoL) in this patient population.
Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted within the Lifelines Cohort Study via sending an add-on digital questionnaire, including (among others) questions on AD, to all adult participants (n=135 950) between February and May in 2020. Data on asthma, allergic rhinitis, lifestyle factors, HR-QoL, and SES were extracted from baseline assessment between 2006 and 2013. Functional, communicative, and critical health literacy was measured by validated items from Chew and the Dutch Functional Communicative and Critical Health Literacy questionnaires between 2012 and 2016. Food allergy was measured by the Food Allergy Questionnaire between 2014 and 2016.
Results: In total, 11.8% of the overall study population reported ever having multiple atopic diseases; of those 23.6% reported having limited functional health literacy, with a higher prevalence among those with a low SES. Limited functional health literacy showed positive associations with smoking, obesity, chronic stress, a low diet quality, and decreased HR-QoL among subjects with multiple atopic diseases.
Conclusion: We identified a health literacy deficit, and its association with a low SES and poor health outcomes among patients with multiple atopic diseases. Further research is warranted to utilize a more extensive assessment to measure health literacy and include more health outcomes, such as treatment adherence and disease control.
Keywords: Atopic dermatitis; HR-QoL; allergic rhinitis; asthma; food allergy; health literacy; lifestyle factors; multimorbidity; socioeconomic status.