Objective: One of the most important objectives in the management of asthma is to improve the quality of life of patients. We summarized our experience in using Juniper's asthma quality of life questionnaire (AQLQ) in Chinese asthmatics.
Methods: Measurement instruments included self-administered AQLQ mandarin Chinese version and its standardized version. The data were from 210 AQLQ evaluations from 96 patients.
Results: AQLQ and its four domains weakly correlated with forced expiratory volume in 1 second (FEV(1)) except the environment domain (r: 0.201 - 0.284). If the asthmatic patients were graded into 4 groups based on FEV(1), AQLQ and its four domains significantly detected the differences among the groups. The change of AQLQ, however, was not correlated with the change of FEV(1). The change of AQLQ domain of symptoms was correlated with the change of peak expiratory flow.
Conclusion: The Juniper's AQLQ performs well in Chinese asthmatics. AQLQ is correlated with pulmonary function and probably more sensitive and accurate than pulmonary function in the evaluation of disease severity.