Özet:

Objective: In the medical literature, it has been shown that quality of life and sleep quality are impaired due to allergic rhinitis and are improved with treatment. In this study, we aimed to determine the change in sleep quality of patients with allergic rhinitis using allergen-specific immunotherapy. Materials and Methods: Seventy-four patients diagnosed with allergic rhinitis according to the clinical evaluation and skin prick test findings in Celal Bayar University Allergy-Immunology Outpatient Department were enrolled in our study. Sleep quality was evaluated with Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) just before specific immunotherapy was initiated and at the end of the first year of treatment with specific immunotherapy. Results: Frequency of having healthy sleep increased significantly after specific immunotherapy in the patients (p< 0.001). A significant correlation was detected between the changes in symptom score and PSQI when evaluated with Spearman correlation analysis (p= 0.01). Improvement was demonstrated in subjective sleep quality, sleep latency, sleep duration, sleep efficacy, factors influencing sleep, use of hypnotics, and daytime somnolence parameters of the PSQI with a decrease in symptom score. Conclusion: In our study, chronic sleep disorder disappeared and improvement in sleep quality was detected in most patients during the second evaluation one year after initiation of specific immunotherapy. Sleep quality increased as the symptom score decreased. These findings demonstrated improvement in the patients' sleep quality with improvement in symptoms following specific immunotherapy treatment. These data should be supported with longer specific immunotherapy therapy in patients with allergic rhinitis.

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