Allergic rhinoconjunctivitis in children

Allergic rhinoconjunctivitis is a common chronic disorder in children, especially in developed countries. It does not cause nasal symptoms only (such as congestion and sneezing) but may also cause general complaints such as fatigue and cough (box 1). It can also cause learning problems1 and has a great impact on quality of life. Uncontrolled allergic rhinoconjunctivtis may aggravate the symptoms of asthma.2 Although classic “hay fever” is easily recognised in children who have a runny nose, sneezing, and itchy eyes during the pollen season, the diagnosis of allergic rhinoconjunctivitis is often missed in children with perennial nasal congestion. #### Box 1: Key symptoms of allergic rhinoconjunctivitis in children ##### Nasal ##### General The term allergic rhinoconjunctivitis is preferable to allergic rhinitis because most patients also have ocular symptoms. In this review, we discuss the prevalence of allergic rhinoconjunctivitis in children, its causes, how it is diagnosed, and how it can be treated. We used the Cochrane library to identify relevant systematic reviews on drugs for allergic rhinoconjunctivitis in children. Medline was searched for systematic reviews on diagnosis and treatment of allergic rhinoconjunctivitis in children using the keywords “rhinoconjunctivitis”, “systematic review”, “meta-analysis”, “diagnosis”, and “treatment”. We limited our searches to “all child”. We took additional references from our personal files. #### SUMMARY POINTS