Terms used for hypersensitivity pneumonitis secondary to avian exposures: A scoping review

Darin Elabbasy, Timo Clemens, Natalia Rachwal, Nivya John, Hsin-Yi Weng, Lynette Hart, Locksley L. McV. Messam. Journal of Allergy and Hypersensitivity Diseases,Volume 5,2025,100035, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jahd.2025.100035.

Highlights

The review included 1,101 articles (1960–2021) on terms describing “BFL…”.
114 unique terms were identified, with occupation-based terms most frequent.
Terminology variation may impact diagnosis and epidemiological estimates.
Standardisation can enhance research quality and clinical decision-making.
Consistent terms support systematic reviews, meta-analyses, and trials.

Abstract

Background

Hypersensitivity pneumonitis secondary to exposure to avian antigens is referred to in the literature as bird fancier’s lung and numerous other names (hereafter “BFL…”).

Objective

This scoping review aims to identify terms used for “BFL…” in the peer-reviewed literature between 1960 and 2021.

Methods

We included peer-reviewed articles referring to “BFL…” in humans and published between 1960 and 2021 in English. We searched Medline, Embase, CINAHL, Scopus, and Web of Science, and extracted terms used for “BFL…” along with the year of publication. We categorised the names into occupation-, pathology-, aetiology-, aetio-pathological-, and occupation- and pathology-based terms. We then calculated the total number of terms used, the individual and category-specific frequencies of use for each term, as well as the overall and decade-specific average number of articles to be read in order to encounter a new term.

Results

^{Coloured line graphs of the proportionate usage of the five most frequently used terms (and “Other” – i.e. the rest together) used to refer to hypersensitivity secondary to exposure to avian antigens in the peer reviewed literature versus decade of publication (1960–2021).}

From 3194 initially screened articles, we found 114 terms used for “BFL…” in 1101 articles included for final review. The most frequently used terms were pigeon breeder’s disease, bird fancier’s lung, hypersensitivity pneumonitis, pigeon breeder’s lung and extrinsic allergic alveolitis (in that order), accounting for 65.2 % of terms found. Similarly, occupation-based terms accounted for 67.1 % of terms identified. On average, a new term for “BFL…” was encountered for every 9–10 articles included in the review.

Conclusion

The term to be used for “BFL…” should be standardised in the peer-reviewed literature. We suggest “bird fancier lung” be used as the term for hypersensitivity pneumonitis secondary to exposure to avian antigens.

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