Symptomatic dermographism in Chinese population: an epidemiological study of hospital-based multicenter questionnaire survey

Abstract

Objective

There are few epidemiological studies on SD in China. This study aims to clarify the epidemic distribution characteristics of SD in China and provide ideas and clues for the prevention and treatment of the disease.

Methods

The cross-sectional study was conducted in 2019 based on the hospital's epidemiological questionnaire. All enrolled patients completed a specific survey with 39 questions, related to demographic characteristics and the relative symptoms. Demographics, disease symptoms were characterized with descriptive statistics. The differences in the symptoms between different genders, disease courses, and regions were compared.

Results

A total of 1800 patients were recruited, of which 615 patients were diagnosed with SD. Among 615 SD patients, the proportion of patients with chronic spontaneous urticaria was the highest, with 437 cases (71.1%). There is a female predominance (female/male ratio is 1.27:1), but there is no statistically significant difference between genders. The average disease course was 2.23 years. Among them, 429 patients had a course less than one year, accounting for about 2/3, and patients with a course more than one year accounted for less than 1/3. The clinical characteristics of patients with different course of disease were statistically different. The initial age is mainly concentrated in the 20–40 years old, accounting for 46.5% (286) of the total number. There are certain differences in incidence due to the different geographical conditions in north and south. Multiple types of urticaria may coexist in the same patient, and the number of patients with multiple urticaria is higher than the number of patients with simple SD. There are differences in the clinical manifestations of SD between north and south.

Conclusions

Environmental factors may affect the occurrence of SD, which may have a similar etiology to other types of urticaria and the cause of SD can be explored from more perspectives.

Keywords:

• Dermato-epidemiology
• epidemiological characteristics
• multicenter
• symptomatic dermographism

Transparency

Declaration of funding

This research was sponsored by Hebei Provincial Health Innovation Special Fund (21377787 D).

Declaration of financial/other relationships

The author declares that there no significant competing financial, professional or personal interests that may influence the performance or the presentation of the work described in this manuscript. Peer reviewers on this manuscript have no relevant financial or other relationships to disclose.

Acknowledgements

We thank all the dermatologists in Beijing Friendship Hospital affiliated with Capital Medical University. We also thank the associate editor and the reviewers for their useful feedback that improved this paper.