RESEARCH ARTICLE
Influence of Initial Treatment Modality on Long-Term Control of Chronic Idiopathic Urticaria
Abstract
Background
Chronic idiopathic urticaria (CIU) is a common cutaneous disorder but the influence of initial treatment modality on long-term control is not known. The aim of this study was to evaluate clinical features, and the influence of initial treatment modality on long-term control.
Methods and Results
641 CIU patients were enrolled from the allergy clinic in a tertiary referral hospital. Disease duration, aggravating factors and treatment modality at each visit were evaluated. Times required to reach a controlled state were analyzed according to initial treatment modality, using Kaplan-Meier survival curves, the Cox proportional-hazards model, and propensity scores. Female to male ratio was 1.7: 1; mean age at onset was 40.5 years. The most common aggravating factors were food (33.5%), stress (31.5%) and fatigue (21.6%). Most patients (82.2%) used H1-antihistamines alone as initial treatment while 17% used a combination treatment with oral corticosteroids. There was no significant difference in the time taken to reach a controlled state between patients treated with single vs multiple H1-antihistamines or between those who received H1-antihistamine monotherapy vs. a combination therapy with oral corticosteroids.
Conclusion
The time required to control CIU is not reduced by use of multiple H1-antihistamines or oral corticosteroids in the initial treatment.
Citation: Kim S, Baek S, Shin B, Yoon S-y, Park SY, et al. (2013) Influence of Initial Treatment Modality on Long-Term Control of Chronic Idiopathic Urticaria. PLoS ONE 8(7): e69345. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0069345
Editor: Salik Hussain, National Institute of Health (NIH), United States of America
Received: February 7, 2013; Accepted: June 7, 2013; Published: July 23, 2013
Copyright: © 2013 Kim et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Funding: This study was supported by a grant (2011-420) from the Asan Institute for Life Sciences, Seoul, Korea. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
Competing interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.
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