The natural course and factors affecting severity of Behçet’s disease: a single-center cohort of 368 patients

Abstract

Our goal was to determine, retrospectively, the occurrence of the symptoms of Behçet's disease in chronological order and the course of the disease. Additionally, probable factors affecting the clinical severity were investigated. A total of 368 patients (171 females and 197 males; aged 41.11 ± 10.9 years) were included in this retrospective cohort study. The chronological order of the clinical manifestations was recorded. Patients were also assessed for clinical severity score. Oral ulcer was the most common manifestation (100 %) followed by genital ulcer (89.4 %), papulopustular lesions (75 %) and articular involvement (60.1 %). Oral ulcer was the most common onset manifestation (66.8 %) followed by genital ulcer (4.9 %), erythema nodosum (3.3 %) and ocular involvement (1.4 %). The duration between the onset symptom and the fulfillment of the diagnostic criteria was 4.67 ± 5.9 years. The duration between the time point of fulfillment of diagnostic criteria and the diagnosis (2.5 ± 2.1 years) was longer in patients having only mucocutaneous lesions (2.8 ± 2.2 years) than in patients having serious organ involvements (1.9 ± 1.6 years; p < 0.01). Serious involvements such as neurological involvement and large vessel involvement had their onsets later. Mean clinical severity score was higher in male patients (5.3 ± 2.1 vs 4.8 ± 1.7; p < 0.05). In logistic regression analysis, male gender (p = 0.03) and increased number of symptoms at diagnosis (p < 0.001, R (2) = 0.73) were found to be significant risk factors for severity. Mucocutaneous lesions, especially oral and/or genital ulcers, usually precede possible serious involvements; therefore, careful follow-up is mandatory. Males with increased number of organ involvements at the diagnosis are associated with more severe disease.

Do clinical findings of Behçet’s disease vary by gender?: A single-center experience from 329 patients

“…Ocular involvement in our patients was similar to that in the literature, and males had a greater rate of ocular involvement, similar to the study of Ugurlu et al (8).…”

“…Ocular involvement ranged between 32.9% and 58.1% in the evaluated studies (5,8). Ocular involvement in our patients was similar to that in the literature, and males had a greater rate of ocular involvement, similar to the study of Ugurlu et al (8).…”

“…Consistently, the initial finding of BD was oral aphthous ulcer in 95.4% of our patients. The initial finding was rarely genital ulcers and ocular involvement, which is in line with the available literature (3,4,8).…”

“…In another study conducted in Turkey, HLA-B51 antigen positivity frequency was, similarly to our study, stated to be around 44% (8). The frequency of a positive pathergy test result varied among the studies.…”

“…A positive familial history in BD has been reported to be as high as 15.4% in an epidemiological study by Bang et al (3) in Korea, while it as at the level of 3.9% in Iran and 2% in Japan; and in Turkey, it was determined to be 7.3% in the analysis of Gürler et al (7), 13.3% in the analysis of Ugurlu et al (8), and finally, 9.7% in our patients (4,10). Patients with BD also have an increased frequency of oral aphthous ulcers independent of a familial history of BD.…”