Epidemiology of vasomotor rhinitis.docVIP

NARCONSENSUSPANELPROCEEDINGS,PART1 EpidemiologyofVasomotorRhinitis RussellA.Settipane,MD arenotimmunologic orinfectious inorigin andareusually notassociated withnasal eosinophilia.” Theclinical char- acteristics of VMR are further elaborated in the article by in this issue. Because VMRisadiagnosis thatessentially requires theexclusion ofallotherformsofrhinitis, anappropriately performed epidemiological study would require protocol incorporating amultitude of standardized tests to rule out all other forms of rhinitis. Appropriate testing might in- clude those tests listed inTable 2.Thearticle byBenniger Abstract: Vasomotor rhinitis is the most common form of nonal- 1 lergic rhinitis, comprising approximately 71% of all nonallergic rhinitis conditions. Although the epidemiology of this subtype of nonallergicrhinitishasnotbeende?nitivelystudied,itisestimated that 14 million Americans suffer from vasomotor rhinitis, with a worldwideprevalenceapproaching320million. Bernstein 3 KeyWords:vasomotorrhinitis,epidemiology,nonallergic rhinopathy,nonallergicrhinitis (WAOJournal2009;2:115–118) et al, which will appear in the next issue of this journal, 5 describes theproposed inclusion andexclusion criteria for research studies in nonallergic rhinopathy, including VMR,asagreed uponbytheparticipants ofthisroundtable meeting (see “Consensus Review and De?nition of Non- allergic Rhinitis With a Focus on Vasomotor Rhinitis, Proposed To Be Known Henceforth as Nonallergic Rhi- nopathy: Part 1. Introduction” in this Review Series issue for the listing of participants). To date, no prospective epidemiologic studies have applied such a protocol to evaluate a large population of rhinitis patients. Conse- quently, current estimates regarding the prevalence of VMR are fairly crude. INTRODUCTION asomotor rhinitis (VMR) is a subtype of nonallergic rhinitis (NAR) that is unrelated to allergy, infection, V structural lesions, systemic disease, or drug abuse. Be- cause it is, by d