D-dimer as a potential blood biomarker for disease activity and treatment response in chronic urticaria: a focused review

Chronic urticaria is an itchy skin disease, which is treated with antihistamines; however, a large group of patients are unresponsive to antihistamines alone and are thus treated with omalizumab, although a small fraction of these patients have particularly recalcitrant disease. Currently, there are no reliable biomarkers available to assess disease activity/severity and treatment response in chronic urticaria patients. However, it has been reported that high levels of d-dimer are observed during disease activity and are significantly reduced during periods of remission. We present a focused overview of studies investigating plasma d-dimer level as a biomarker for disease activity and treatment response in patients with chronic urticaria.