Assessment of anxiety and depression in patients with chronic spontaneous urticaria

Abstract

Objective To evaluate the severity of anxiety and depression in patients with chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU) and explore the correlation between anxiety and depression scores, disease activity, and quality of life. Methods Outpatients with CSU were enrolled at Guangzhou Institute of Dermatology from August 2023 to December 2023. A questionnaire survey was used to collect clinical data and urticaria activity score 7 (UAS7), dermatology life quality index (DLQI), self-rating anxiety scale (SAS), and self-rating depression scale (SDS) from patients. SAS and SDS scores were obtained again after over 8-week treatments. Pearson correlation was used to analyze the correlation between SAS, SDS and UAS7 and DLQI. SAS and SDS were compared before and after the treatments. Results A total of 53 CSU patients were included, of which 15 (28.30%) had anxiety and 16 (30.19%) had depression. The DLQI score was significantly higher in CSU patients with anxiety than in those without anxiety (t=2.58, P=0.013), and the UAS7 score was significantly higher in patients with depression than in that without depression (t=2.29, P=0.026). Pearson correlation analysis showed a positive correlation of SAS with UAS7 and DLQI (r=0.31, P=0.029; r=0.33, P=0.020), while SDS was not related to UAS7 and DLQI (both P>0.05). After over 8-week treatments, SAS and SDS were significantly decreased in 24 patients (t=3.97, P<0.001; t=3.69, P=0.001). Conclusions CSU patients often have comorbidities of anxiety and depression. The poorer the quality of life, the greater the likelihood of anxiety, and the more severe the disease activity, the greater the likelihood of depression. Anxiety is correlated with disease activity and quality of life.

Keywords

• urticaria, chronic spontaneous
• anxiety
• depression
• correlation analysis