Comparison of the Asthma Health Questionnaire-33-Japan and the Short-Form 36-Item Health Survey for Measuring Quality of Life in Japanese Patients with Asthma

ABSTRACT Background The Asthma Health Questionnaire (AHQ)-Japan is useful for assessing quality of life (QOL) in Japanese patients with asthma. However, no studies have compared the AHQ-Japan to other QOL instruments. Methods The AHQ-33-Japan and the Medical Outcomes Study Short-Form 36-Item Health Survey (SF-36) were completed simultaneously by 126 Japanese patients with asthma (48 men, 78 women; 58.1 ± 17.3 years of age), and the data were compared. Results Poor negative correlations (correlation coefficient (r) = -0.20 to -0.44, P Conclusions Our results show that the AHQ-33 is useful as a disease-specific QOL instrument in Japanese patients with asthma and that it is better than the SF-36, which is a generic QOL instrument. In the future, the AHQ-33 should be compared to other asthma-specific questionnaires.