2015 ACR/ARHP Annual Meeting: Behçet’s Disease Poses Diagnosis, Treatment Challenges

For venous thrombosis in Behçet’s, “certain experts give (anti-coagulants), and certain experts don’t. And we have never seen an emboli due to thrombosis in Behçet’s disease.”

A colchicine trial has shown improvement in ulcers and some skin lesions, especially pseudofolliculitis and erythema nodosum, Dr. Ozen said.⁵

But a lack of hard data is a real problem in handling this multi-faceted disease, she said.

“We lack activity criteria and evidence-based treatment guidelines,” she said, “so that is something we want to pursue.”

Thomas R. Collins is a medical writer based in Florida.

References

1. Mizuki N, Meguro A, Ota M, et al. Genome-wide association studies identify IL23R-IL12RB2 and IL10 as Behçet’s disease susceptibility loci. Nat Genet. 2010 Aug;42(8):703–706.
2. Remmers EF, Cosan F, Kirino Y, et al. Genome-wide association study identifies variants in the MHC class I, IL10, and IL23R-IL12RB2 regions associated with Behçet’s disease. Nat Genet. 2010 Aug;42(8):698–702.
3. Kirino Y, Zhou Q, Ishigatsubo Y, et al. Targeted resequencing implicates the familial Mediterranean fever gene MEFV and the toll-like receptor 4 gene TLR4 in Behçet disease. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2013 May 14;110(20):8134–8139.
4. Krupa B, Cimaz R, Ozen S, et al. Pediatric Behcet’s disease and thromboses. J Rheumatol. 2011 Feb;38(2):387–390.
5. Davatchi F, Sadeghi Abdollahi B, Tehrani Banihashemi A, et al. Colchicine versus placebo in Behçet’s disease: Randomized, double-blind, controlled crossover trial. Mod Rheumatol. 2009;19(5):542–549.