What is chronic urticaria all about? Yes, this is one of the different kinds of urticaria that develops on a person’s body. Hives or urticaria is a medical condition characterized by eruptions of varied sizes or raised red spots on the skin. These are often itchy and appear and disappear occasionally. Sometimes urticaria happens due to an allergy to some particular food item or some drug. Hives usually vary in size and also may combine to form bigger swellings.
Urticaria is among the common skin disorders, and resembles formation of weals on the skin. This type of skin disorder is also called nettle-rash, because the rash of hives is similar to the sting of a nettle. Urticaria or hives come in different forms and can be chronic, acute or recurrent.
Types and causes of Urticaria:
Urticaria or hives is a skin disorder, which is an allergic skin rash. You will find that there are two distinct types of urticaria: the first being acute urticaria that is generally caused by allergy and could last several hours to six weeks; whereas chronic urticaria persists beyond six weeks. Normally urticaria disappears within a few days to some weeks. But itching and swellings do persist in certain unfortunate individuals that continue for years together.
- Chronic Urticaria
Generally cold, dermographic and pressure urticaria happen together with chronic idiopathic, cholinergic and other physical urticarias. Contrarily, heat urticaria is associated with other kinds of physical urticaria and appear isolated. Skin eruptions that are raised above skin level coupled with acute itching are worsened by a slight local warmth. These could be either acute or chronic; and has a tendency to recur frequently for years together.
Urticaria takes shape on any part of the body and a typical lesion could last for one minute to half an hour, and others could last longer. Some have skin eruptions only once in a while, and some have it numerous times in a day. Some patients just have a couple of rashes on their bodies, while others have wide spread rashes that may last for many days or months.
It is very important to note here that Urticaria may not be always allergic in nature. One may suffer from chronic urticaria due to allergic and non-allergic causes. While allergic reasons could be food and other items, non-allergic reasons could be related to stress, exercise, auto immunity related and temperature based.
Particularly in recurring cases of chronic urticaria, the emotional factors play an important role. If a person is suffering from emotional stress, it could directly or indirectly lead to develop a tendency for urticaria. Chronic urticaria does have an auto immune link. Histamine is releases due to presence of auto antibodies against Immunoglobulin, which causes chronic urticaria.
