Successful Treatment of Autoimmune Urticaria with Low-Dose Prednisolone Therapy Administered for a Few Months: A Case Series of 42 Patients.

BACKGROUND: Chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU) is defined as symptoms of urticaria persisting for 6 weeks or more without obvious cause. Autologous serum skin test (ASST) positivity in patients with CSU is considered to be associated with autoimmune urticaria (AIU). METHODS: In this retrospective study we retrieved the medical records of 1,073 urticaria patients seen at the Department of Dermatology and Allergology of Szeged University between January 2005 and February 2014. Forty-two patients (36 female and 6 male) met the study criteria by having CSU and giving positive results in the ASST. Our aim was to assess the clinical efficacy and safety of low-dose oral prednisolone therapy administered to patients with antihistamine-refractory ASST-positive CSU for a few months. Patients were given an initial dose (40 mg/day) of prednisolone until the complete resolution of the symptoms, usually 7-10 days, and then the dose was gradually decreased, as in other autoimmune diseases. RESULTS: Prednisolone therapy lasted for an average of 3.6 months and a complete long-lasting response was achieved in 35 of 42 AIU patients (83.3%). The follow-up period was at least 36 months (3 years) for each AIU patient; the longest follow-up time was 139 months (11.5 years). None of the patients reported any considerable side effects. CONCLUSION: Based on our results, we suggest that the use of this treatment could be an alternative for the treatment of AIU. Our present results also highlight the need for other therapies in a small percentage of AIU patients. Our results suggest that AIU represents a transient autoimmunity that can be successfully treated with low-dose steroid therapy administered for a few months.

Recurrent, Severe Aphthous Stomatitis and Mucosal Ulcers as Primary Manifestations of a Novel STAT1 Gain-of-Function Mutation.

Chronic mucocutaneous candidiasis (CMC) characterized by persistent and recurrent Candida infection of the skin, nails, and the mucosa membranes has been proposed as the major infectious phenotype in patients with gain-of-function mutation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 1 (STAT1) 1. However, viral infections caused mostly by herpesviruses, and a broad range of autoimmune disorders may also be part of the clinical phenotype. We report here on a 31 years old female patient suffering from severe mucosal aphthous mucositis and ulcers and recurrent herpes simplex for decades. We found a previously unknown heterozygous sequence variant in STAT1 (c.1219C>G; L407V) affecting the DNA-binding domain of the protein in the patient and her 4 years old daughter. We found this mutation gain-of-function (GOF) by using immunoblot and luciferase assays. We detected low proportion of IL-17A-producing CD4+ T cell lymphocytes by using intracellular staining and flow cytometry. Candida-induced secretion of IL-17A and IL-22 by mononuclear cells from the patient was markedly decreased compared to controls. These data suggest that the novel mutant allele may result in impaired differentiation of CD4+ T cells to CD4+/IL-17+ cells. The clinical phenotype of the disease in this patient was unique as it was dominated primarily by severe aphthous stomatitis and ulcerative esophagitis and only partly by typical CMC resulting in diagnostic delay. We suggest that patients with severe recurrent aphthous stomatitis and esophagitis should be evaluated for STAT1 GOF mutation. Based on the broad clinical spectrum of the disease, we also suggest that CMC and CMC disease may not be an appropriate term to define clinically STAT1 GOF mutation.