Acute inflammation – Chronic urticaria and idiopathic angio-edema
Chronic Urticaria, treatment, pathomechanism
Research aim
To improve diagnostics and treatment for patients with chronic urticaria, increase quality of life and reduce healthcare costs. To clarify pathomechanism of CU as well as response to different therapeutic strategies and its predictors.
About us
Chronic urticaria (CU) is characterized by recurrent, severely itching wheals and/or angioedema for longer than 6 weeks, and is categorized into chronic spontaneous and chronic inducible urticaria. It is highly prevalent (0.5-5%), with spontaneous remission with a median disease duration of 3-5 years. Conform guidelines treatment algorithm recommends treatment with nonsedating antihistamines up to four-fold standard dose, followed by Omalizumab (anti-IgE antibody) and subsequently ciclosporin. While patients with good treatment response are characterized by long treatment duration in which discontinuation is determined by “trial and error”, difficult to treat patients suffer from long term “trial and error” therapies.
There is a high need for predictors of treatment response, time to response upon different treatment strategies as well as predictors of expected treatment duration. Our research group investigates these questions in large international daily practice cohorts and participates in studies investigating new treatment strategies (e.g. BTK-/ c-Kit inhibitors). Also we perform translational biomarker studies (OLINK) to investigate pathomechanism of CU and predictors of treatment response.
We participate in international clinical trials and are part of UCARE (global network of Urticaria Centers of Reference and Excellence), collaborating with international stakeholders from healthcare, sciences, patients and industry.