WORLD VIEW

Ocular features of Behçet’s disease: An international collaborative study

Nobuyoshi Kitaichi¹, Akiko Miyazaki¹, Daiju Iwata¹, Shigeaki Ohno¹, Miles R Stanford² and Hormoz Chams³

¹ Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine, Sapporo, Japan
² Medical Eye Unit, St. Thomas’ Hospital, London, UK
³ Behçet’s Research Center, Shariati Hospital, Teheran University for Medical Sciences, Teheran, Iran

Correspondence to:
Nobuyoshi Kitaichi, Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine, Sapporo 060-8638, Japan; nobukita{at}med.hokudai.ac.jp

Objective: To investigate the clinical features of ocular lesions in Behçet’s disease in different countries.

Methods: A descriptive questionnaire survey was performed.

Results: 25 eye centres in 14 countries returned questionnaires on prevalent cases in 2006. Clinical data were analysed on 1,465 patients with ocular lesions. Recurrent oral aphthous ulcers were reported in 94.5%, skin lesions in 69.5% and genital ulcers in 61.4%. Most of the patients had bilateral and recurrent intraocular inflammation. Poor visual acuity was seen in 18.9% in women, but 24.8% in men (p<0.01). Panuveitis was seen more in men than in women (p<0.01). 23% of the patients had visual acuity equal to or worse than 20/200 at the final visit. The patients with poor vision were more frequently in India, Iran and Japan than in other countries (p<0.01).

Conclusions: We report the largest contemporary international case series of patients with ocular involvement in Behçet’s disease. Panuveitis was significantly more frequent in men than women, and men tended to have a worse visual prognosis. There were some differences in the clinical pattern of Behçet’s disease in different countries. Despite modern treatment, the disease still carries a poor visual prognosis with one-quarter of the patients blind.

Abbreviations: CAPSII, combined anterior and posterior segment intraocular inflammation

Competing interests: None declared.

This study was supported by a Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) Japan, and a Grant for Research on Sensory and Communicative Disorders from the Ministry of Health, Labor and Welfare, Japan.

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