Dermatology Research and Practice

Review Article

Chronic Urticaria: Indian Context—Challenges and Treatment Options

Table 1

Quality of life (QoL) studies in patients with chronic urticarial.


Study design, place	Methods used	Outcome	Reference

Questionnaire based study on 170 consecutive patients, London (UK)	Dermatology life quality index (DLQI) assessment in different urticarial groups	Moderate impairment in QoL in CU with physical urticaria; significantly higher impairment in patients with DPU and cholinergic urticaria (QoL affected areas: work/study, symptoms/feelings, leisure)	[37]

Interview/questionnaire-based study on 100 in-patients (96 age- and sex-matched controls), University of Mainz (Germany)	Assessed using Skindex-29 on overall QoL and three defined QoL aspects	CU patients had a markedly reduced QoL compared to controls, all 3 areas affected, psychiatric comorbidity was made worse	[39]

Questionnaire based study on 157 CU patients, Berlin (Germany)	CU-QoL, DLQI, and Skindex-29 questionnaires were completed	70% data variance in CU-QoL in functioning, sleep, itching/embarrassment, mental status, swelling/eating, and appearance; sleep and mental health significant areas are affected and women are more affected by pruritis	[41]

Mental disorder assessment on 100 patients, University Medical Center Mainz (Germany)	Specialised diagnostic interviews and psychometric instruments and SCL-90R GSI	48% of patients had one or more psychosomatic disorders; high emotional stress impairing quality of life	[42]

Cross-sectional observational study , Suwon (Korea)	CU-QoL and UAS; multiple linear regression for CU-QoL predictors	DPU, sunlight exposure, and emotional stress significantly influenced the overall CU-QoL scores (univariate analysis); multivariate regression models indicated that dermatographism and emotional stress were significant predictors of impairment of all four QoL domains	[40]

Abbreviations: QoL: quality of life, CU-QoL: chronic urticaria-quality of life, DLQI: dermatology life quality index, DPU: delayed pressure urticarial, and SCL-90R GSI.