Clinical importance of thiol-disulfide balance in the diagnosis of chronic urticaria in children: Relationship with disease activity and immune markers

To demonstrate the role of thiol–disulfide balance (TDB) in chronic urticaria (CU) in children and to examine their relationship with disease activity to find out its value as a diagnostic biomarker. Our study is a prospective, case-control, single-center cross-sectional study. A total of 78 individuals were included. Thirty-nine patients with CU were compared with 39 healthy children with similar demographic characteristics. Serum native thiol (-SH), disulfide (SS), total thiol (-SH + -S-S-) (TT), and derived indices that constitute the thiol–disulfide balance were measured. The relationship between these parameters and the urticaria activation score (UAS) was evaluated. Appropriate statistical methods were used in comparisons between the two groups. Correlations were analyzed using Spearman's ρ. Diagnostic performance was assessed using ROC analysis. There was no significant difference when both the patient group and the control group were evaluated in terms of age and gender.(p>0.05). -SH and TT were Considerably lower in the CU group (-SH: 535.69±51.90 vs 613.23±90.92 µmol/L; TT: 650.63±55.38 vs 746.51±137.93 µmol/L; both p0.05). UAS was inversely associated with -SH (ρ=−0.389; p=0.009). IgE was positively correlated with TT (ρ=0.403; p=0.007) and SS (ρ=0.355; p=0.018); no significant association was observed with eosinophilia. ROC analysis revealed AUC=0.749 (SE=0.053; 95% CI 0.645–0.853; p