Exploring the Disease Duration of Urticaria and Associated Determinants in Primary Care

R. Soegiharto, B. J. Hengevelt, N. Boekema-Bakker, et al.  Clinical & Experimental Allergy (2025): 1–4, https://doi.org/10.1111/cea.70170.

Summary

• Most patients (75%) with new-onset urticaria in general practice recover within 1 week.
• Chronic urticaria (17%) was associated with higher age at onset, high BMI and early prednisolone prescriptions, the latter likely reflecting higher disease severity.

Determinants of longer disease duration.

To the editor,

Most patients presenting with new-onset urticaria are expected to have short-lived symptoms, acute urticaria (AU). Initial treatment of urticaria is therefore generally limited to a wait-and-see approach and second-generation (low dose) H1-anthistamines [1]. However, it is estimated that 0%–39% of patients develop chronic urticaria (CU), mainly based on outdated studies that focused on children with a follow-up time of up to 2 years [2]. Determining the exact proportion of CU patients is essential, because...

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