Comorbidities in Patients with Chronic Urticaria; Clinical and Epidemiological Review Study

Background and purpose: Urticaria is a pruritic cutaneous disease characterized by weal and flare.  Acute and chronic urticaria affects the quality of life. Some abnormalities are associate or comorbid with urticaria. The purpose of this study was to examine comorbid conditions in patients with urticaria.  Materials and Methods: We searched in many databases including Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus, and Embase. Keywords were comorbid and urticarial. All full articles and the English language were included. We evaluated 500 articles that reported association or relation as comorbidity between urticarial and disorders in primary screening to be 250, 100, 80, and 70 articles in Google Scholar, PubMed, Scopus, and Embase, respectively.  Results: Prevalence of psychiatric problem (according to SCID-1) was 60% in chronic idiopathic urticaria. Thyroid autoantibodies (anti-thyroglobulin and anti-peroxidase) were found to be positive about 5 to 15% of CU. Food allergy, allergic rhinitis, atopic dermatitis, and asthma were significantly higher in CSU. Eradication of H.pylori infection was a tendency to more rapid improvement of chronic urticaria. Conclusion: Psychiatric disturbances, such as depression or anxiety and autoimmune thyroid disorders, were documented to be more common in chronic urticaria which should be considered as comorbidity.