Management of chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU): a treat to target approach using a patient reported outcome

Background Treat-to-target therapy approaches are established for chronic diseases such as diabetes, hypertension, and more recently rheumatoid arthritis, resulting in improved patient outcomes. These approaches do not use patient reported outcomes (PRO) as targets of therapy. Chronic spontaneous urticaria (CSU), also called chronic idiopathic urticaria (CIU), is defined as recurrent urticaria of known and unknown cause, lasting more than 6 weeks. Treatment of CSU can be challenging. However, with the advent of proven therapies and validated instruments for measuring disease activity, the concept of treat-to-target (T2T) can be successfully applied to CSU. Herein, we propose a potential PRO therapeutic target and suggest a T2T approach for the management of patients with CSU.