Omalizumab in chronic urticaria

Purpose of review The current EAACI/GA2LEN/EDF/WAO treatment guidelines for the management of urticaria recommend omalizumab as fourth-line therapy. Within the last year, many reports of omalizumab treatment in chronic urticaria have been published. Recent findings Two multicenter, randomized, placebo-controlled trials in chronic spontaneous urticaria have shown excellent efficacy of omalizumab. Furthermore, in various case series and case reports, omalizumab has been shown to be effective also in inducible urticarias; however, no randomized placebo-controlled trial has been performed yet to thoroughly investigate the efficacy of omalizumab in inducible urticarias. Summary In this review, all published information on the use of omalizumab in urticaria will be summarized and discussed with special emphasis on reports published within the last year. The available data indicate that omalizumab is an effective and well tolerated drug in antihistamine-resistant chronic urticaria.