How to Treat Patients with Chronic Spontaneous Urticaria with Omalizumab: Questions and Answers

Abstract

Omalizumab is an effective treatment for patients with chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU). In routine clinical practice, physicians often face complex cases of CSU and need to decide whether patients are suitable for omalizumab treatment and how to manage this therapy. Here, we provide evidence and experience-based answers to the most common and important questions on omalizumab treatment of CSU. At 4 large urticaria centers, questions on the use of omalizumab in the treatment of patients with CSU were collected and then ranked by frequency and importance and grouped into top 5 domains using an interactive consensus approach. We suggest that omalizumab can be used to treat patients with CSU with any of the 3 CSU phenotypes (wheals only, angioedema only, wheals and angioedema), with comorbid chronic inducible urticaria, with cancer, who receive other biologics or cyclosporine, or who are pregnant or want to become pregnant, or are breast-feeding. Omalizumab treatment should be started with 300 mg every 4 weeks, monitored with validated patient-reported outcome measures, and maintained, in responders, until remission of CSU. Finally, partial responders or non responders can benefit from omalizumab updosing or adding or switching to cyclosporine. We believe our suggestions on the use of omalizumab in CSU will help to inform clinical decision making. Follow-up efforts should increase, systematically review, and profile the data available andprovide evidence-based recommendations on how to best use omalizumab in CSU.