Accidental food‐allergic reactions are associated with higher costs and more sick leave but not with quality of life.

We demonstrated that patients with accidental allergic reactions reported more problems with regard to mobility, self-care, usual activities, pain/discomfort and anxiety/depression compared with patients without accidental allergic reactions. Patients with accidental allergic reactions during the 1-year follow-up ( I n i = 36) had higher total yearly direct and indirect costs compared to patients without accidental allergic reactions ( I n i = 10) (mean €1186 [bootstrap 95% CI: €609-1845] vs €158 [bootstrap 95% CI: €68-266], I p i = .01). Assuming that 2.1% of the Dutch adults has food allergy,1 whereof, 46% experiences accidental allergic reactions yearly,2 a rough estimation of the total yearly costs for all food-allergic Dutch adults with accidental allergic reactions would be 160 million euro and without accidental allergic reactions 25 million euro. (Table S2) When excluding these three patients, the total yearly direct and indirect costs were still significantly higher in patients with accidental allergic reactions compared to patients without accidental allergic reactions (mean €673 [bootstrap 95% CI: €414-967] vs €158 [bootstrap 95% CI: €69-280]), I p i = .03). [Extracted from the article]