Abstract
Environmental hypersensitivity is a clinical condition with a variety of systemic symptoms caused by exposure to small levels of environmental factors, such as chemicals and physical factors, which do not affect healthy people. There is an urgent need to elucidate the etiology of environmental hypersensitivity and the underlying mechanisms of the symptoms, and to obtain information on environmental and medical countermeasures for the prevention, manifestation of symptoms, and treatment of environmental hypersensitivity. Questionnaire surveys are necessary for understanding the actual complaints of patients and clarifying the environmental factors that may initiate environmental hypersensitivity and/or trigger symptoms. In this report, the authors summarize the common characteristics of questionnaires used worldwide in epidemiological studies of environmental hypersensitivity, and discuss which questions are necessary for epidemiological studies of environmental hypersensitivity. A common feature of the questionnaires is that they include a wide range of questions about various types of environmental factors and symptom manifestations. Considering the speed of environmental changes in recent years, it is desirable to develop questionnaires that continue to search for new environmental factors. We would like to use the results of this survey to update the questionnaires, and contribute to solving the issue of environmental hypersensitivity.
