Will chronic urticaria heal on its own?

Chronic urticaria usually occurs when the condition lasts for more than 6 weeks, and wheals appear on the patient's trunk, limbs, face, and other parts of the body. The condition of chronic urticaria is quite complicated and is closely related to diet, crying, infection, physical factors and other factors. Some patients whose condition is not very serious hope that chronic urticaria can recover on its own. So, can chronic urticaria heal itself? Let’s take a look below.

1. It is difficult to cure chronic urticaria

Many patients go to big hospitals and look for big experts. Most of them want to find a "root cause treatment" method, hoping that there will be no recurrence after treatment, which is what is medically called "cure." However, it should be noted that the cause of chronic urticaria is complex and vague, and many factors are involved in the occurrence and development of the disease. In most cases, it is difficult to find a clear cause or trigger. As a result, there is a lack of treatment methods targeting the cause, and it is obviously impossible to "eradicate the disease."

Many hospitals conduct allergen tests. The results of these tests are only of certain significance for ruling out allergic factors, but the positive results are not important. What is important is whether these positive results are closely related to the onset of the disease. In fact, most of them have no correlation. Foreign research and my personal clinical experience show that it is obviously difficult to explain the cause of chronic urticaria using allergens. There is also a lack of reliable evidence to prove that other factors such as infection and drugs are definitely related to the onset of a particular patient.

In fact, if a patient with chronic urticaria is very sure of the cause of the disease, it is often not urticaria. Therefore, at least for now, there is a lack of clear and effective treatment methods targeting the cause of the disease, so it is difficult to pursue "root cause" treatment, that is, a cure.

2. Chronic urticaria can heal itself

The lack of reliable "root cause" treatment does not mean that you will be troubled by the disease for the rest of your life. Large-sample studies conducted abroad and in China have confirmed that chronic urticaria can resolve on its own and may even not recur, which is called self-healing. Different types of urticaria and different conditions of urticaria will disappear on their own at different times (which is what we call the course of the disease in medicine). For patients with skin scratches, positive autologous serum test (a special autoimmune method for detecting chronic urticaria, which is being carried out in many hospitals including Southwest Hospital), and severe illness, the course of the disease is usually long, mostly 1-2 years, or even 2-10 years. About 1% of patients may have attacks lasting more than 10 years. Therefore, many patients will recover on their own after 1-2 years, and this situation cannot be changed by drugs. At least so far, there is no treatment that can definitely shorten the course of the disease.