Despite the increase of allergic diseases over the last decades, the population ignores the basic concepts, interfering in their prevention and treatment. The “Allergy Blog” (Blog da Alergia) has been using digital media resources to offer new forms of dialogue and patient´s ethical enlightenment since 1996. This research objective to report the interactive educational experience, through the internet on "http://www.blogdalergia.com" and to find out, from the audience's questions, which are the main areas of interest about immune-allergic diseases.
Methods:
Research on 1375 e-mails randomly selected, sent to the Blog home page, to know what were the main issues raised by the lay public. The e-mails were analyzed, considering the gender and age of the users and the topic searched.
Results:
Since 1996, Allergy Blog answered 4,256 e-mails and 2,200 comments. Most of patients were female: 78,2%, compared with 19.9% male and 1.9% with no information. Many users (67.65%) did not reported their age, as there wasn’t a mandatory item for this question. But, 25.38% of the users were parents or guardians of children with allergic disease.
The frequency of the most popular topics searched were: Urticaria (14,55%), Doubts about drugs (12.51%), Allergic Rhinitis (10,98%), Pruritus (8,15%), Asthma (8, 87%), Contact dermatitis (5,60%), Atopic Dermatitis (4,58%), Drug Allergy (2,47%), Cough (3,86%), and Others (6,40%).
Dermatologic manifestations of allergy bring more questions than the respiratory ones (32.9% versus 23.7%), and drug concerns responded for 14.9% of the doubts. Asthma, for which there are a lot of educative campaigns, represented only 8.9% of the questions.
To clarify these questions, Allergy Blog published educational texts and interacted with the visitors through: a) Comments on Blog posted questions, 2) Answers to doubts sent via e-mail, 3) Chat intended for short answers.
Conclusions:
The discovery of the lay's greatest gaps and areas of interest can be a guideline to improve new educative actions in Allergy and Immunology. The use of digital media and social networks may be a prime tool for the education of allergic individuals, community dialogue and dissemination of correct information about the various aspects of immune-allergic diseases.