Background
Chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU) may occasionally exhibit long‐lasting lesions with bruising, usually considered a hallmark of urticarial vasculitis (UV). Histopathology of these chronic urticarial lesions has not been extensively studied.
Methods
Skin biopsies from patients with anti‐H1 resistant CSU were evaluated for several parameters (edema, location, intensity, and cell composition of the inflammatory infiltrate, and abnormalities in the blood vessels).
Results
We studied 45 patients (37 female/8 male, mean age 49.3 years) with CSU, 60% of whom with occasional bruising lesions and 3 patients with hypocomplementemic UV. Histopathology in CSU showed mainly perivascular and interstitial inflammatory infiltrate (91.1%), including eosinophils (80%), neutrophils (77.8%), and lymphocytes (71.1%), vasodilatation (88.9%), intravascular neutrophils (95.6%), dermal edema (51.1%), swelling of endothelial cells (51.1%), and minor and rare fibrinoid necrosis and karyorrhexis (6.7%). Significant karyorrhexis and frank fibrinoid necrosis were observed, respectively, in two and three cases of UV. In patients with occasional bruising, mast cells occurred in fewer cases whereas eosinophils were more frequent, but no statistically significant difference was found for other parameters.
Conclusions
Histopathological findings were not significantly different between CSU with or without bruising lesions. Bruising may be associated with more severe forms of CSU with no histopathological signature, although UV cannot be completely excluded based on histopathology.
DISCUSSIONThis relatively low reactivity to IPBC, and the higher prevalence in males and those aged >40 years, are consistent with results from another European centre, 7 but are distinct from results from the last 10 years in North America. They showed higher reactivity to IPBC (between 3.1% and 4.7%), possibly because of the inclusion of doubtful results and the higher patch test concentration (0.5% pet). 8 Low IPBC reactivity contrasts with high reactivity to isothiazolinones (>14%), 9 which is still found among our patients in many household and professional products and occasional
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