061 Clinical features of urticaria in children

Abstract

Urticaria, defined by the presence of wheals and/or angioedema, is a common skin disorder, but the etiology of urticaria in children remains incompletely understood. The aim of this study is to determine the clinical characteristics of urticaria in children. We retrospectively investigated 73 patients (range 0-14 years, female 40 patients) who suffered from urticaria and visited to our outpatient clinic more than twice from 2010 to 2013. Data were collected regarding age, sex, disease duration, severity and laboratory parameters such as total IgE, antinuclear antibodies and routine laboratory tests. From 73 patients with urticaria, there were 45 patients (61.6%) with spontaneous acute urticaria and 13 patients (17.8%) with spontaneous chronic urticaria. Mean disease duration at first visit of chronic urticaria was 5.0 months. Among the patients with spontaneous acute urticaria, infection was found as the trigger in 17 patients (37.8%). And there were 8 patients (11.0%) with allergic urticaria (food or drug), 5 patients (6.6%) with physical urticaria (solar, cold contact or heat contact), 2 patients (2.6%) with angioedema and 2 patients (2.6%) with mastocytosis. Our data showed that spontaneous acute urticaria was the most frequent type of urticaria, followed by spontaneous chronic urticaria. In addition, infections were the most frequent triggering factor of acute urticaria.