Chu CY, et al. - In patients with chronic urticaria (CU) in Taiwan, researchers studied the prevalence of psychiatric disorders, identified by patients having three outpatient visits with a primary or secondary diagnosis of a given psychiatric disease, and psychiatric medication use [defined by having at least four outpatient visits with prescriptions for anxiolytics, antidepressants or sleeping pills in 2010 or 2011]. Data have been obtained from Taiwan's National Health Insurance Research Database for 2011. Of the 167,132 CU patients, 82·5% had mild CU, 17·0% had moderate CU and 0·4% had severe CU. Investigators found that CU patients had a higher prevalence and risk of psychiatric disorders and psychiatric medication prescription than control groups. They observed that the relative risk (RR) of psychiatric disorders was 1·43 for patients with mild, 1·50 for patients with moderate and 2·32 for patients with severe CU vs the controls. It was noted that the RR for the use of psychiatric medication was 1·95 for those with mild CU, 2·70 for those with moderate CU and 2·09 for those with severe CU vs controls.