Is Chronic Urticaria an Autoimmune Disease?: Letter to the Editor

Abstract

K Ke ey y W Wo or rd ds s: : Urticaria; autoimmune diseases A An na ah ht ta ar r K Ke el li im me el le er r: : Ürtiker; otoimmün hastalık Cop yright © 2010 by Tür ki ye Kli nik le ri EDİTÖRE MEKTUP hro nic ur ti ca ri a (CU) is a com mon cli ni cal con di ti on in which ur tica ri a at tacks oc cur al most da ily and per sist mo re than six we eks. No un derl ying eti o logy can be de tec ted in many CU pa ti ents, and these ca ses are cal led chro nic idi o pat hic ur ti ca ri a (CI U). 1The most re cent in for ma ti on on the pat ho ge ne sis of CU sug gests that many ca ses ha ve an un derl ying au to im mu ne di se a se. Ten to forty per cent of CU pa ti ents ha ve im mu nog lo bu lin (Ig) G-struc tu re an ti bo di es aga inst IgE or the alp ha cha in of high-af fi nity IgE re cep tors in the ir se rum.1-3 Ad di ti onally, the facts that high le vels of au to an ti bo di es such as an ti-TG and an ti-TPO in CIU patients, and their res ponse to im mu no sup pres si ve tre at ments such as cyclos po ri ne A at trac ted at ten ti on to au to im mu nity's im por tan ce in CU's eti o logy. [4][5][6][7] Chro nic im mu no lo gic inf lam ma ti on in an or gan might be a po ten ti al risk for de ve lo ping au to im mu nity in anot her or gan or tis su e be ca u se of gene tic pre dis po si ti on.1 On the ba sis of this re la ti ons hip, we eva lu a ted an ti-TG, an ti-TPO and an ti-GPC an ti bo di es; vi ta min B12 le vels; and thyro id func ti ons in CI U pa ti ents and we in ves ti ga ted the re la ti ons hip bet we en CI U and au to im mu nity.A to tal of 100 (71 fe ma les and 29 ma les) CI U pa ti ents and 20 (16 fe males and 4 ma les) he althy con trol sub jects were en rol led into the study. Demog rap hic cha rac te ris tics of the study gro up are sum ma ri zed in Tab le 1.The da ta ob ta i ned we re eva lu a ted using the SPSS v11.0 sta tis ti cal softwa re pac ka ge. All va lu es we re ex pres sed as me an ± stan dard de vi a ti on. A Chi-squ a re analy sis test was per for med to eva lu a te the dis tri bu ti on of se xes bet we en gro ups and Mann Whit ney U test was used to com pa re the da ta of the pa ti ent and the con trol gro ups. The le vel of sta tis ti cal sig ni fi can ce was set at p< 0.05.An ti-TPO an ti bo di es we re fo und po si ti ve in 15 of 100 pa ti ents, an ti-TG an ti bo di es in 23 of 100 pa ti ents and both an ti-TPO and an ti-TG an ti bo di es