This site is intended for healthcare professionals
Micrograph of human skin cells rendered in pink and purple
Chronic Spontaneous Urticaria Learning Zone

Transcript: Predicting urticaria duration

Last updated: 24th Apr 2025
Published: 24th Apr 2025

Marcus Maurer, MD, and Petra Staubach-Renz, MD

All transcripts are created from interview footage and directly reflect the content of the interview at the time. The content is that of the speakers and is not adjusted by Medthority.

- Question here, "Are there any biomarkers that can show us the possible duration of CSU?" Look, I'll give you my- - I love this question. - I'll give you my spiel on it because I do think that there are biomarkers on a population basis. I tell all of my patients, "This is a really bad disease. I know this is really bad, but I also know this disease and you are in the right place." I also tell them there are very few good things about uticaria, but one good thing about uticaria is that it goes away by itself. Then the next question, as you may guess, is always, predictably, "Well, when, doctor?" And then I tell them, "Well the average duration is five to seven years." And then I hear, "Well, I've already had it eight years." So this whole concept of average doesn't really apply to the individual patient and neither does any of the biomarkers or clinical markers that have been associated with long duration or high severity of the disease now, including angioedema, high disease activity. Some of these markers are just good to associate them with the overall course, the average course, but not with the individual cause.

- But do you know when I discuss this, the same thing with the patients, I very often discuss that we do not know if we treat hard and early, that it's the duration is shorter. And I would like to know, can you remember we would, we are talking about this 25 years and I think this is important and here again, cure, we can find this solution and if we could show this, then everyone can get an excellent treatment very early and maybe then they have the shorter duration. This is really interesting. - Yes, and that reminds me of a wonderful episode that we did on acute urticaria and we discussed exactly that point. How valuable is that limited data that hitting hard and hitting early in acute urticaria can actually prevent the chronification. And I said, look, we need more studies and we all know how hard it is to do acute urticaria studies, but we need more studies to understand why is it that only very few acute urticaria patients go on to become chronic uticaria patients, whereas most stay with acute uticaria and lose it after a couple of days and weeks. And what is the impact of how we treat acute uticaria on the course of the disease? And really, we may consider ourselves to be uticariologists, but we're only as good as the data and the knowledge that we have and our knowledge and data on acute uticaria is very, very limited. So this to me is one of the biggest unmet needs. - Yes.

View the video

Welcome:

Complete the form below to receive our regular round-up of the latest clinical news and medical education resources on Medthority, straight to your inbox.

* = required information 

 

By providing your email address, you are opting in to receive our monthly newsletter.

By submitting this form you agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. You can withdraw your consent at any time by clicking the ‘unsubscribe’ link found at the bottom of every email.