Successful treatment of neuro-Behçet’s disease with infliximab: four years follow-up

Abstract

Neuro-Behçet’s disease (NBD) is a rare but severe manifestation of Behçet’s disease. Patients with NBD tend to have high morbidity and mortality. Some patients do not respond adequately to conventional therapy (corticosteroids and immunosuppressants). This has led to treatment gaps in the therapy of NBD. There are reports in the literature of patients with Behçet’s disease responding to anti-TNF therapy. We present a case of a male patient with biopsy proven cerebral vasculitis presenting as NBD who has been in remission with near resolution of cerebral magnetic resonance imaging lesions for 4 years following treatment with infliximab and azathioprine.

The effectiveness of the anti-tumor necrosis factor therapy infliximab in neuro-Behçet’s disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis

“…A total of 21 studies that directly addressed the effectiveness of therapy for neuro-Behc¸et's disease met the study eligibility criteria and were included in the qualitative and quantitative analysis (Figure 1 and Table 1). 8,9,[16][17][18][19][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34] The publications included two studies that investigated the effectiveness of infliximab in patients with multi-organ refractory Behc¸et's disease and satisfied the inclusion criteria (Hibi et al, 2016, andGiardina et al, 2011). 16,18 These studies were enrolled by the reviewers since they satisfied the inclusion criteria and presented objective measures to elicit the response of the neurological manifestations to infliximab therapy.…”