Prevalence of urticaria in patients with rhinitis
In total, 17 articles have reported data on the prevalence of urticaria
in 14,952 patients with rhinitis, yielding a pooled prevalence of 17.6%
(95% CI, 13.2%–21.9%), as presented in Fig.
2.15,20,21,26-39 Among reference individuals without
rhinitis (5 studies21,26-29; 18,698 reference
individuals), the pooled prevalence of urticaria was 7.4% (95% CI
4.3%–10.4%). The overall random-effect of prevalence of urticaria was
15.2% (95% CI, 9.9%–20.4%) in adults with rhinitis (8
studies21,26,27,30,32,35,37,38; 7749 adults with
rhinitis) and 17.4% (95% CI, 9.2%–25.6%) in children and
adolescents (5 studies28,29,31,34,36; 2421 children
and adolescents with rhinitis). When comparing children aged
<6 years and those between the ages of 6 and 18, the pooled
prevalence of having urticaria in the former (pooled prevalence, 34.8%;
95% CI, 15.3%–54.2%) than in the latter (pooled prevalence 21.3%;
95% CI, 3.3%–38.2%). Categorizing studies according to geographical
region, the pooled prevalence of urticaria in patients with rhinitis was
the highest among Asians (pooled prevalence, 20.9%; 95% CI,
14.7%–27.2%), followed by North Americans (pooled prevalence, 18.7%;
95% CI, 14.5%–22.9%) and Europeans (pooled prevalence, 15.3%; 95%
CI, 9.6%–20.9%).
Fifteen studies had data on the occurrence of urticaria in 14,112
patients with AR; the prevalence of urticaria was 17.8% (95% CI
13.2%–22.5%).15,20,21,26,27,30-39 Two
studies34,39 stratified the activity of rhinitis
(persistent rhinitis and intermittent rhinitis), and a significant
difference was observed between the afoementiond types. According to
statistical analysis, the pooled prevalence of urticaria was 10% (95%
CI, 8.0%–12.0%) and 7% (95% CI, −4.0%–17.0%) among patients with
persistent rhinitis and intermittent rhinitis, respectively.
In total, 8 studies15,21,26-28,34,35 had a sample size
of >1000 individuals, which revealed a significantly lower
prevalence of urticaria (13.7%, 95% CI 7.4%–20.0%) than the
remaining 10 studies,20,30-34,36-39 with a sample size
of <1000 individuals (20.8%; 95% CI, 13.8%–27.9%). When
restricting studies to articles with a clinical diagnosis of both
rhinitis and urticaria, the pooled prevalence was 11.4% (95% CI,
4.7%–18.1%) (5 studies29,30,33,35,38; 4061 patients
with rhinitis). A total of 8
studies15,21,28,29,32,34,35,37 were cross-sectional,
427,30,31,39 were cohort studies, and
520,26,33,36,38 were clinical trials. The pooled
prevalence of urticaria was the highest in clinical trials (22.4%; 95%
CI, 14.7%–30.0%). Cross-sectional studies and cohort studies had a
prevalence of 15.8% (95% CI, 8.7%–22.9%) and 14.9% (95% CI,
6.7%–23.2%), respectively.