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The survey, which polled 10,006 Americans, primarily women, revealed that45 percent of Americans suffer from seasonal allergies. Of those who haveallergies, 41 percent said they were not tested for allergies until they werein their thirties, 22 percent said they were first tested in their twenties,15 percent their teens and 22 percent during childhood.
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Eighty-two (82) percent of survey respondents with seasonal allergies saidthey spend fewer than 10 minutes with their doctor during an office visitdiscussing their prescription allergy medication. Fourteen (14) percent saidthis discussion lasted between 10 and 20 minutes, three percent said 20 to 30minutes and one percent typically discuss their prescription allergymedication with their doctor for thirty minutes or more per-visit.
"It's alarming that so few people with seasonal allergies are spendingenough time discussing their medications with their doctors during an officevisit," said Peter Burch, marketing and sales SVP for Marketing TechnologySolutions, the owner of QualityHealth.com. "A productive visit with thedoctor should be a dialogue in which questions are asked and answered.QualityHealth can be a help in this, as it offers a patient education programcalled Ask Your Doctor where consumers can get information on their conditionand guidance on what to ask the doctor, whether it's about medication,symptoms or anything else. Armed with the right information, patients will bebetter able to manage their allergies."
The survey also showed that twenty-eight (28) percent of seasonalallergies sufferers missed work or school this year directly related to beingunable to effectively manage their condition. Eighteen (18) percent ofrespondents said they typically miss one to three days of work or school eachyear due to allergy symptoms; seven percent said they miss three to five days;three percent said they miss five to seven days, while 72 percent said theymiss no work or school due to allergy symptoms.
As the seventh installment in its "HealthOpin" poll series,QualityHealth.com polled its database of registered members between August 6and August 10, 2008, collecting responses from 10,006 consumers interested inhealth matters. Survey respondents were 87 percent female and 13 percent male,with the majority between the ages of 35 and 54. The survey's margin of erroris +/- 3 percent.
About Marketing Technology Solutions
Marketing Technology Solutions (MTS) is a media and technology companyspecializing in servicing health consumers and advertisers through proprietaryalgorithms that simultaneously personalize health content and targetadvertising based on a unique healthographic(TM) consumer profile.Healthographics(TM) are a proprietary combination of demographic and (age,gender, address) and consumers physical and emotional health profile. Ourhealthographic profile has upward of 250 individual data points. MTSspecializes in connecting clients' brands with health-conscious consumersthrough data-driven patient education, targeted customer acquisition,syndicated research, and permission-based interactive marketing. MTS gainsconsumer insights through its network of MTS owned Web sites,QualityHealth.com, Healthpages.com and Nubella.com, whose 10 million membersrely on the sites for health and wellness news, tips, tools, support groups,and patient education.
According to July 2008 comScore, Inc., the global leader of measurement inthe digital world, QualityHealth.com, with approximately 5.8 million uniquevisitors per month, ranks among the most visited health sites on the Web.For further
