The Turkish Journal of Pediatrics 2017 , Vol 59 , Num 3
Does having an asthmatic sibling affect the quality of life in children?
Özge Yılmaz 1 ,Ahmet Türkeli 2 ,Özlem Karaca 3 ,Hasan Yüksel 1
1 Division of Pediatric Allergy and Immunogy, Celal Bayar University, Manisa, Turkey
2 Eskişehir State Hospital, Eskişehir, Turkey
3 Department of Pediatrics, Celal Bayar University, Manisa, Turkey
DOI : 10.24953/turkjped.2017.03.007 Yılmaz Ö, Türkeli A, Karaca Ö, Yüksel H. Does having an asthmatic sibling affect the quality of life in children? Turk J Pediatr 2017; 59: 274-280.

Chronic illness in a family member leads to deterioration of quality of life in other members of that family. We aimed to investigate the influence of having an asthmatic sibling on a child`s quality of life (QoL). We enrolled 2-12 year aged healthy children with an asthmatic sibling in the study group and healthy children with a healthy sibling in the control group of this cross-sectional study. Sociodemographic characteristics of children and disease severity characteristics of asthmatic siblings were recorded. All parents filled in Turkish generic PedsQLTM short form appropriate for the child`s age group. Study and control groups had 114 children each. Total PedsQLTM scores were not significantly different in any of the age groups (p=0.23, p=0.13, p= 0.11 respectively). Emotional PedsQLTM sub-scores in children with an asthmatic sibling were significantly worse (83.0±16.5 vs 91.6±10.9 in the 2-4 year age group, 72.0±17.8 vs 92.2±11.6 in the 5-7 year age group, 73.7±24.1 vs 88.7±14.8 in the 8-12 year age group respectively, p≤0.002 for all). Similarly, psychosocial sub-score was significantly lower in the 2-4 and 5-7-year-olds but not the 8-12 year old groups (p=0.01, p=0.01, p=0.08 respectively). In conclusion, healthy children with asthmatic siblings have significantly lower emotional QoL and this needs to investigated for other chronic diseases in further research. Keywords : asthma, sibling, quality of life, PedsQLTM

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