Currently submitted to: JMIR Public Health and Surveillance
Date Submitted: May 13, 2026
Open Peer Review Period: May 18, 2026 - Jul 13, 2026
(currently open for review)
Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.
Prevalence and risk factors of urticaria among adults in Shenzhen, China: A large-scale cross-sectional study
ABSTRACT
Background:
Although urticaria is a common inflammatory skin disorder that affects up to 20% of the world population at some point during their life, there is a lack of systematic investigation into the impact of both exogenous and endogenous factors on its prevalence.
Objective:
To gain a better understanding of the reasons behind the increasing prevalence of urticaria in Shenzhen.
Methods:
We investigated the prevalence and risk factors of urticaria among residents of Shenzhen using a multistage stratified random sampling method within each monitoring area in 2023.
Results:
The prevalence of urticaria among adults in Shenzhen was 3.18%, with a higher prevalence among females (3.54%) compared to males (2.76%). Additionally, we observed an increasing trend in prevalence with higher levels of education. Age, living district, occupation, and marital status were also found to significantly influence the prevalence of urticaria. Furthermore, a personal medical history and a family history of urticaria were identified as significant risk factors. Interestingly, our study also found that the consumption of certain beverages was associated with the prevalence of urticaria, with females being more affected by the consumption of beverages in general, while males were more affected by the consumption of milk and non-carbonated sugary beverages. Additionally, our study found that the frequency of use of cosmetic and sunscreen products had a significant impact on the prevalence of urticaria among female residents.
Conclusions:
our study provides important and comprehensive information that can guide prevention efforts and further exploration into the pathogenesis of urticaria. Clinical Trial: NA.
Citation
Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.
Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.