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Parental knowledge and awareness and towards allergy prevalence in Selangor
The allergy epidemiology is another worldwide problem as its prevalence trigger troublesome amongst
society. Malaysia as a developing country has no exception towards it. Family as a fundamental
institution as well as the simplest unit of the society have significant roles to put a bridle on the issues.
Allergies are known to cause social and economic burden of the sufferer and to the close family
member. Parental knowledge, attitude and practice plays a crucial role in allergy prevalence,
prevention and treatment strategy. In Malaysia, the misconception of certain allergy symptom and
prevention becomes another real challenge. Poorly self-perceives as the early diagnosis approach
could lead to improper clinical diagnosis thus affects the treatment accuracy. It then brings about the
delay of appropriate treatment and upturn the treatment cost. In certain urgent allergy conditions, such
as anaphylaxis, a delay is lethal to the sufferer. This paper highlights the paternal and maternal
knowledge, awareness and practice towards allergy disease. This study also presents the important of
having adequate knowledge to self-perceive of allergy disease. As this approach is useful to give
surface overview on allergy prevalence, adequate knowledge compromises of precise manifestation.
This cross-sectional study involves 117 pair of parents in Selangor with the age ranged from 28-61
years old. A self-administered questionnaire has been used to indicate respondentโs allergy status,
their knowledge, awareness and practice towards allergy disease. As overall, the common symptom of
allergy among parents were allergy rhinitis, eczema and dry and itchy rashes at skin with the
percentage of prevalence ranged between 6.8% to 28.4%. The data also indicated the effect on
insufficient of knowledge and awareness among parents towards their decision on treatment and
prevention plan. Most parents do not have adequate understanding on the relatedness of immune
system abnormality reaction of allergy as well as the roles of immune system component such as
Immunoglobulin E (IgE) in allergy reaction. They also have insufficient knowledge about the crucial
allergy mechanism such as the cross-reaction activity and the difference between food allergy and food
intolerances. Pearson correlation between knowledge of allergy term, cause and symptom with allergy
prevention and treatment shows positive significant correlation with (r = 0.244, P=0.008) for maternal
and (r = 0.262, P=0.004) for paternal respectively. Parents with inadequate knowledge about allergies
symptom have limited ability to choose the treatment and prevention for allergy disease. As the
shortcoming, they tend to do unnecessary dietary elimination and extreme food avoidance as well as
disregards the important to consult with the healthcare professional regarding their allergy symptom.
Overall, parental knowledge in society represent their involvement in prevention and treatment
strategy for allergy sufferer especially their children. Adequate knowledge and awareness of this unit of
society conceded a better future to control allergy prevalence among children