Urticaria and COVID-19: A review

The first cases of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) appeared in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March 2020. Cutaneous manifestations are among the heterogenous clinical features of the disease, and urticaria is one of the most common skin manifestations reported in COVID-19. We reviewed the literature available regarding COVID-19-associated urticaria. A literature search in the PubMed and Scopus databases was conducted, till the cut-off date of 24th July 2020, using the following terms: "skin" or "cutaneous" or "urticaria" or "urticarial," and "COVID-19" or coronavirus disease. The search resulted in 502 publications. In this review, 30 articles with a total of 202 patients with COVID-19-associated urticaria were included. Patient age ranged from 2 months to 84 years. Gender was reported in 149 patients; of these 96 (64%) were females, and 53 (36%) were males. Of the 105 patients with a determined onset of the disease, 58 (55%) presented with rash preceding or concurrently with the classic COVID-19 symptoms. Urticarial rash was mainly either generalized or distributed on the trunk. Associated respiratory symptoms, level of care, medications used, comorbidities, and duration, and distribution and timeline of urticarial rash were summarized. In this article, we present a review of literature on COVID-19-associated urticaria, which would enable dermatologists and other clinicians to diagnose COVID-19 early in the onset of disease, and prevent viral spread. Additionally, this may also pave the way for further studies on this topic.