A new tool to evaluate the impact of chronic urticaria on quality of life: chronic urticaria quality of life questionnaire (CU‐Q 2 oL)

Background: Health‐related quality of Life in patients with chronic urticaria is evaluated by mean of generic instruments or questionnaire designed for skin diseases. No disease‐specific tool is now available for the assessment of chronic urticaria impact from patients’ viewpoint. Objective: The aim of our study is to develop and validate a new questionnaire specifically designed for the assessment of quality of life in chronic urticaria (Chronic Urticaria Quality of Life Questionnaire – CU‐Q 2 oL) Methods: In the development phase of CU‐Q 2 oL an initial list of items of 37 items was compiled and given to 80 patients with chronic urticaria; the 23 most significant items were selected and converted into questions evaluating the answers on a Likert scale of five steps. The validation procedure involved 125 patients (86 F and 39 M) (age 42.17 ± 9.24 years). Results: Following a statistical analysis, CU‐Q 2 oL showed a six‐dimensional structure and good levels of internal consistency for the extracted factors: Pruritus (0.79), Swelling (0.65), Impact on life activities (0.83), Sleep problems (0.77), Looks (0.83) and Limits (0.74). In stable conditions CU‐Q 2 oL showed a good reliability, ranged between 0.64 and 0.92. Responsiveness to clinical changes was accomplished. Discussion: These results provide evidence that CU‐Q 2 oL has specificity enough for being a valid tool for detecting the relative burden of CU on subjective wellbeing, and for obtaining a global evaluation both of CU impact and of treatments, taking into account the patient's point of view. The CU‐Q 2 oL was easily and quickly filled up and well accepted by the patients.