Clustering the clinical course of chronic urticaria using a longitudinal
database: Effects on chronic urticaria remission
Abstract
Background: Little is known about the clinical course of chronic
urticaria (CU) and predictors of its prognosis. We evaluated CU patient
clusters based on medication scores for the initial 3 months of
treatment to investigate time to remission and relapse rates and to
identify predictors for CU remission. Methods: In total, 4552 patients
(57.9% female; mean age of 38.6 years) with CU were included in this
retrospective cohort study. The K-medoids algorithm was used for
clustering CU patients. Kaplan-Meier survival analysis with Cox
regression was applied to identify predictors of CU remission. Results:
Four distinct clusters were identified: patients with consistently low
disease activity (cluster 1, n = 1786), with medium-to-low disease
activity (cluster 2, n = 1031), with consistently medium disease
activity (cluster 3, n = 1332), or with consistently high disease
activity (cluster 4, n = 403). Mean age, treatment duration, peripheral
neutrophil counts, total IgE, and complements levels were significantly
higher for cluster 4 than the other three clusters. Median times to
remission were also different among the four clusters (2.1 vs 3.3 vs 6.4
vs 9.4 years, respectively, P < .001). Sensitization to house
dust mites (≥ class 3) and female sex were identified as significant
predictors of CU remission. Around 20% of patients who achieved CU
remission experienced relapse. Conclusion: In this study, we identified
four CU patient clusters by analyzing medication scores during the first
3 months of treatment and found that sensitization to house dust mites
and female sex can affect CU prognosis.