Behcet's disease patterns and subsets in a cohort of Egyptian patients

Aim of the work: To study patterns and disease subsets of Behcet's disease (BD) patients admitted to Cairo University Hospitals and to detect whether relapse of the disease will affect the same system every time or not. Patients and methods: A retrospective study involving 82 BD patients admitted to Cairo University Hospitals, from January 2000 to December 2014. They were reviewed to analyze the frequency of different disease manifestations and to find out disease patterns and subsets. Results: 75 men and 7 women were included in the study, with a mean age of 34.2 +/- 9.7 years. Their disease duration ranged from 1 to 34 years with a mean of 9.1 +/- 6.9 years. Mucocutaneous manifestations were present in 82 patients (100%), ocular manifestations in 53 patients (64.4%), vascular manifestations in 49 patients (59.8%), and neurological manifestations in 9 patients (11%). Most of our patients, 48 (58.5%) had the same one system pattern throughout the disease course, 25 patients (30.5%) had two systems patterns and 9 patients (11%) had three systems patterns. Conclusion: BD usually affects the same system throughout the disease course whether mucocutaneous, vascular, ocular or neurological and the most common pattern is the one system affection. This will help to predict the system that will be affected in each time the patient presents with a disease relapse. Also, it will help in differentiation between disease relapse and any associated other disease minimizing the need for and the cost of investigations. However, future studies on larger number of patients are recommended. (C) 2018 Egyptian Society of Rheumatic Diseases. Publishing services provided by Elsevier B.V.