Chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU) adversely affects the quality of life of the patient to a considerable extent. There is a lack of any prognostic marker of the disease.

Therefore, a study was conducted to ascertain the possible prognostic markers of CSU in children.

All patients below 18 years of age followed by the Pediatric Immunology and Allergy Clinic of a hospital with a diagnosis of CSU from June 2017 to February 2019 were recruited in the study. Investigators compared the clinical and laboratory findings between the symptomatic patient group and the patient group that remained in remission for at least three months without the use of medication.

Overall, 52 cases were included in the study [32 (61.5%) were male]. Mean age at time of diagnosis was 9.4 ± 4.4 years. About 46.2% cases went into remission. It was noted that young age at the time of diagnosis and being in the initial months of the disease were associated with good prognosis. Among laboratory findings, elevated absolute neutrophil count and neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio (NLR) were linked with poor prognosis. NLR had a positive correlation with disease duration.

It was thus concluded that for childhood CSU, younger age and initial months of the disease are good prognostic markers, while only neutrophil/lymphocyte count serves as a remission marker.

Source: Karaman S, Turedi B. Neutrophil-lymphocyte ratio: a possible marker of remission in children with chronic spontaneous urticaria. Allergol Immunopathol (Madr). 2020 Apr 13.