Swetha D¹, M Bhagya Rekha², S Srikanth³,B.S.N.Reddy⁴

¹Assistant Professor, Department of Dermatology, Prathima Institute of Medical Sciences, Karimnagar,Telanagana,²Civil Assistant Surgeon, MGM Hospital,Warangal,³Associate Professor, Department of Pathology,Prathima Institute of Medical Sciences,Karimnagar,Telanagana,4Professor, Department of Dermatology,Mamata Medical College,Khammam.

Address for correspondence: Dr Swetha D, Assistant Professor, Department of Dermatology, Prathima Institute of Medical Sciences, Karimnagar, Telanagana, India

Email: swethambbs2@yahoo.com

Introduction: Urticaria is a common pruritic skin disorder that affects 15 to 25% of individuals at some point of their life time. It is one of the most frustrating problem to the affected victim because it produces severe physical and emotional distress. Likewise, it poses a serious therapeutic dilemma to the attending dermatologist because of its chronicity and refractory nature of lesions to the treatment

Material and Methods:A total number of one hundred patients of either sex with history suggestive of chronic urticaria reporting to the out patient clinic of Dermatology, Venereology and Leprology (DVL) department during the period of two years from April 2009 to March 2011, constituted the subjects for the present study.

Results: The patients were in the age group of 11-65 years with maximum number (33%) being in the 21-30 years age group. Females (66%) outnumbered the males (34%) in the series. Majority of the patients (53%) belonged to the urban area and were literate (91%) . Duration of the disease varied from 6 weeks to 5 years and the most commonly observed was from 1-2 years. 58% of the patients had only Urticaria and the remaining 42% had Urticaria and angioedema

Conclusion: From the present study, it is concluded that the etiology is not clear in large number of patients and hence labelled as chronic idiopathic urticaria. Autologous serum skin test (ASST) constitutes one of the important screening test for autoimmune urticaria.

Keywords :Urticaria, Angioedema, Autoantibodies, Autologous serum skin test