Anxiety, depression, and stress in Korean patients with chronic urticaria

Abstract

Background/Aims Emotional distress is thought to cause or maintain chronic urticaria (CU). We aimed to investigate the presence of anxiety, depression, and stress in Korean adult CU patients and to explore their potential impact on treatment. Methods We enrolled 79 CU patients and a disease control group comprising 39 persistent asthma patients. The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) was used to evaluate depression and anxiety. Stress and quality of life (QoL) were assessed by Stress Response Inventory and CU-QoL questionnaires. The sociodemographic and clinical data such as urticaria activity score (UAS-15, UAS-6) were obtained. Results The prevalence of depression and anxiety based on the HADS were 48.1% and 38.0%. Although the prevalence of anxiety didn’t differ between the CU and asthma patients, depression was significantly more prevalent in the CU patients (48.1% vs. 28.2%). Stress tended to be lower in CU patients. Anxiety, depression, and stress exhibited negative correlations with QoL. Anxiety showed significant correlation with UAS-6 and pruritus-visual analog scale (VAS; r = 0.256, r = 0.272, p < 0.05, respectively); depression correlated with sleep difficulty-VAS ( r = 0.261, p < 0.05). Stress was associated with UAS-15, UAS-6, pruritus-VAS, and sleep difficulty-VAS ( r = 0.251, r = 0.317, r = 0.302, r = 0.258, p < 0.05, respectively). Conclusions The current study first presented that Korean CU patients frequently have anxiety and depression, which affect their QoL and demonstrated that anxiety, depression, and stress had different effects on sleep difficulty, pruritus, and urticaria severity in Korean CU patients.

Itch in Adult Population with Type 2 Diabetes Mellitus: Clinical Profile, Pathogenesis and Disease-Related Burden in a Cross-Sectional Study

“…As the HADS questionnaire is commonly used worldwide, it is quite easy to conduct an assessment comparing scores in various itchy disorders. For instance, the HADS results obtained in our study showed comparable deterioration to systemic itch in polycythaemia vera [48], as well as some other itchy skin disorders, including psoriasis [49], atopic dermatitis [50], urticaria [51,52], chronic prurigo [53] or acne [54], known to cause relevant disability. This has several limitations.…”

Spiritual well-being and quality of life are impaired in chronic urticaria

“…This is in accordance with recent research which mostly demonstrated emotional distress affect CU and other skin disease patients QoL, leading them to have a low SpWB. 9,[26][27] Therefore, providing spiritual care might improve QoL among such patients.…”

Management of psychocutaneous disorders: A practical approach for dermatologists

“…Anxiety and depressive symptoms can be both assessed by the hospital anxiety and depression scale, that was developed by Zigmond et al 32 in 1983, and is the most commonly used screening tool to evaluate anxiety and depression in non-psychiatric hospital settings. 33 This scale can be used for adolescents and adults. 34 Several studies have been published with this scale in the context of dermatology and psychodermatology.…”

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