Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 29, 2025
Precision Implementation of Minimal Erythema Dose MED Testing to Assess Individual Variation in Human Inflammatory Response
Published on: October 3, 2019
The 7-day recall period version of the Urticaria Control Test-UCT7
Thomas Buttgereit1, Pascale Salameh2, Olga Sydorenko1
1Institute of Allergology, Charité-Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Corporate Member of Freie Universität Berlin and Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany; Department of Allergology and Immunology, Fraunhofer Institute for Translational Medicine and Pharmacology (ITMP), Berlin, Germany.
Background:
The Urticaria Control Test (UCT) is a well-established, very easy to use and calculate 4-item patient-reported outcome measure to assess chronic urticaria disease control during the previous 4 weeks. Clinical trials and practice may benefit from the use of a UCT version with a shorter recall period, but this does not exist.
Objectives:
We sought to develop and validate a UCT version with a 7-day recall period, the UCT7.
Methods:
The UCT7 was developed, based on the UCT, and tested, in 152 patients with chronic urticaria (spontaneous: n = 101, inducible: n = 51) for its reliability, validity and screening accuracy, and clinimetric properties, in other words, the cutoff for well-controlled disease and the minimal clinically important difference.
Results:
The UCT7 showed excellent internal consistency reliability with a Cronbach αvalue of 0.91 and test-retest reliability with an intraclass correlation coefficient of 0.83. Convergent validity was high and strongly correlated with anchors of disease control, wheal and angioedema frequency, and urticaria-related quality of life impairment. The UCT7 showed excellent sensitivity to change; however, changes in angioedema activity and impact did not correlate well with changes in UCT7. Based on receiver-operating characteristic curve analysis, the proportion of correctly classified patients, and patients' assessment of treatment efficacy, we recommend a cutoff value of 12 points for identifying patients with well-controlled disease. The UCT7 minimal clinically important difference for improvement was estimated to be 2 points.
Conclusions:
The UCT7 is a validated 7-day recall period version of the UCT. It is ideal for the assessment of disease control at short intervals in patients with chronic urticaria in clinical studies and practice.
