Treatment of chronic pruritus-what is new?

Abstract

Chronic pruritus is one of the most common and stressful symptoms in medicine. Therapy remains agreat challenge because of the lack of approved therapies. In the recent past agreater understanding of the pathogenesis has enabled the results to be translated into new forms of therapy. The various therapies target awide range of points in the pruritic cascade-from blockade of intracellular and intercellular signaling pathways in the skin to the modulation of neurotransmission. This article provides asummary of current therapeutic options based on the current S2K guideline and gives an overview about recent developments in antipruritic treatments.