Brief communication
A positive serum basophil histamine release assay is a marker for ciclosporin-responsiveness in patients with chronic spontaneous urticaria
1 St John’s Institute of Dermatology, St Thomas’ Hospital, London, UK
2 Department of Dermatology, Odense University Hospital, Odense, Denmark
Clinical and Translational Allergy 2012, 2:19 doi:10.1186/2045-7022-2-19
Published: 1 October 2012Abstract
The electronic records of 398 patients with chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU) who had had a serum basophil histamine release assay (BHRA) performed as a marker of functional autoantibodies were audited. The BHRA was positive in 105 patients (26.4%). Fifty eight were treated with ciclosporin because they were H1 anti-histamine unresponsive. CSU patients with a positive BHRA were more likely to respond clinically (P<0.001) and to have raised thyroid autoantibodies (P<0.02) than those with a negative BHRA. The BHRA offers a useful predictive biomarker for a good response of H1 antihistamine-unresponsive CSU patients to ciclosporin.
