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.