2013 Volume 58 Issue 3 Pages 301-308
This study was aimed at interpreting the meaning of both objective and subjective evaluations of the patient's stress with skin itch disease. The subjects were 87 atopic dermatitis patients (AD) and 102 chronic-urticaria (CU) patients. Skindex16 was used for the subjective evaluation. Short-time autonomic-nerves measurement was carried out, and the LF/HF was adopted as an index for the objective evaluation. The results showed the following: 1) although the scores of symptom, emotion and function of Skindex16, and the disease duration were mutually related, the LF/HF was unrelated. 2) Although AD patients had higher scores of Skindex16 than CU, the median value of LF/HF (1.9) in AD patients did not show a significant difference from that of LF/HF (2.2) in CU patients. 3) It was observed that one of risk factors of high LF/HF (6.5) occurred when the comprehensive score of Skindex16 was low, even if frequency was low. From the results, it became clear that there is a gap between the evaluation of subjectivity and objectivity, conversely, less complaint may become one of the risk factors of high LF/HF, and as for LF/HF, we judged that around 2.0, as a standard value, has validity. It was concluded that the short-time measurement of autonomic nerves is meaningful when used together with questionnaire investigation to carry out an evaluation of patient's stress factor in clinical dermatology.
