Risk factors and Life-Style in Chronic Urticaria
Objective: To define life style factors (sports, diet, caffein, smoking, alcohol) and risk factors (systemic diseases, medications, BMI, occupation, marital status, family history, sleep problems, psychological problems, allergy, stress) associated with chronic urticaria (CU).
Background: CU is a chronic inflammatory disease which has been associated with a female gender, thyroid diseases, infections, pseudoallergens in the diet, drugs and stressful conditions. But life style factors such as diet, physical activity, caffeine intake, alcohol intake and smoking and risk factors such as blood type, occupation, exposure to hazardous substances in the work place, family history has not been thoroughly investigated and compared with healthy individuals.
Methods: This is a prospective survey study including CU (CSU and CIndU) patients over 18 years old with a disease duration shorter than 1 years. One sex&age-matched control for each patient will be included who do not have a history/current chronic urticaria, chronic inflammatory skin disease such as (psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, lichen planus, lupus, hidradenitis suppurativa, etc) and patients who are specifically referred for allergy work-up, for allergic asthma, allergic rhinitis, drug allergy. The questionnaires will be printed out and filled by the patients in the clinic under the supervision of the physician and the physician will check the ‘to be checked by the physician’ parts and control if there are missing responses. Then the questionnaires will be uploaded to REDCAP application (along with lab values of the patients if they exist).
The steps to be taken by the centers: Translation of documents into local language and submit for ethics committee and start after ethics approval. Please do not forget that one ethics approval is enough for every country: if a center from your country already got approval from the ethics committee, then you will only need to take permission from your local authorities. Please note that ethics approval from Turkey is available and for Germany it is submitted for approval. Please, do not forget to get signed informed consent from the patients.
Project documents are available on the UCARE member area.Project lead: Emek Kocatürk Göncü
Project advisor: Marcus Maurer
Steering committee: Torsten Zuberbier, Chris Rutowski, Michael Makris, Romi Saini, Mona Al-Ahmad, Simon Francis Thomsen, Connie Katelaris, Margarida Gonçalo, Clive Grattan, Pavel Kolkhir
Status: Global Rollout 1st of June 2023
If you have any questions and want to participate, please reach out to Emek Kocatürk Göncü
(dremekozgur(at)gmail.com)
Please note that link for study participation will be sent to you by Emek Kocatürk Göncü when you state your wish to participate in the project.
