Citizen science based symptom scores of allergic rhinitis to validate the grass pollen hay fever forecast

Introduction: On average 23% of the European population suffers from allergic rhinitis of which pollen is a major cause. Hay fever symptom forecasts can help these patients to adapt their behaviour and to take their medication in time. We developed the LUMC hay fever forecast for grass pollen allergic patients based on local weather parameters (de Weger et al. Int J Biometeorol 2013). In this study we analysed to what extent symptom scores collected by the citizen science platform www.Allergieradar.nl (de Weger et al. Allergy 2014) are correctly predicted by the LUMC hay fever forecast.