Background: Prognosis of spontaneous urticaria in association with early treatment remained unclear. In this study, we retrospectively studied the prognosis of acute spontaneous urticaria in relation to age and treatments in a local clinic of dermatology.
Methods: Out of 5000 patients who visited an office dermatology clinic, clinical records of patients with spontaneous urticaria were extracted. Their prognosis and the relation to age and treatments were analyzed by the Kaplan-Meier method and generalized Wilcoxon test.
Results: Among 386 patients diagnosed as spontaneous urticaria, 284 patients (73.6%) had begun treatments within a week after the onset. The non-remission rates of them after one week, four week and one year from the onset were 26.8%, 15.0% and 6.7%, respectively. The non-remission rate of patients who were 20-years-old or younger by one year after the onset of urticaria, was significantly lower than that of patients older than 20-years-old. No apparent relations between the remission rate and sex or the use of steroids was detected. However, the non-remission rate of urticaria that was treated with a standard dose of antihistamine was lower than that treated with additional medications.
Conclusion: Most patients who began treatments within one week from the onset remitted shortly. However approximately 7% of them continued to suffer from symptoms for more than a year. Such prolongation tends to be seen among patients who required other medications in addition to standard dose of antihistamine.