Disease Duration of Urticaria: A Sub-Analysis of a Survey on Subtypes and Clinical Characteristics of 1061 Patients With Urticaria in the Primary Care Institutes in Japan.

Disease duration of urticaria is variable from days to decades. However, the mechanism of persistence for urticaria is largely unknown. To investigate factors which relate to the prognosis of urticaria, we conducted a cross-sectional analysis on disease durations of 1061 patients with urticaria who visited nine primary dermatology clinics from 1st October to 11th November 2020. Among them, 216 (20.4%) had acute urticaria, while 383 (36.1%) and 125 (11.8%) had suffered from urticaria for 3 years or more and for 10 years or more, respectively. There was no significant difference between males and females in disease duration. In patients under 20 years old, 75 (38.9%) had acute urticaria. By contrast, more than 20% of patients older than 50 years had urticaria for 10 years or more. Disease duration for 3 years or more of patients with dermographism and those with cholinergic urticaria was 42% and 45.3%, respectively. Although a majority of urticaria likely remit, more than one-third of patients at primary dermatology clinics suffer from urticaria for 3 years or longer. The disease duration was longer in older patients, those with dermographism and/or cholinergic urticaria.