Behçet disease – Case presentation

Abstract

Behcet's disease is a rare and poorly understood condition with multiple systemic manifestations. The disease causes inflammation in blood vessels throughout the body which leads to numerous symptoms that may appear and disappear unpredictable. Case presentation A 33 year old woman was admitted (interned) to our clinic. Her family medical history reveals – multiple strokes (father) and autoimmune thyroiditis (sister). The onset of her symptomatology was in 2013 and it consisted of fever (39-40 Celsius degrees) sicca syndrome and persistent headaches, recurrent oral and genital ulcerations. An important event is essential to be mentioned -the patients has suffered an episode of upper gastrointestinal bleeding (hemoglobin has dropped to 2.5g/dl which has led to cardiac arrestresuscitated). The lab tests showed: C3 hypocomplementemia, Anti-centromere antibodies (-), anti-b2gp1 antibody (+), lupus anticoagulant (+), U1RNP(-). We started to administrate cyclophosphamide to the patient, thus his condition has improved after the 2nd dose. At the 12-month evaluation we were able to see a significant clinical and biological improvement. Conclusions In order to be able to talk about “evidence based medicine” for the management of Bechet’s disease, a large number of clinical trials is required to provide to the attending physicians the necessary data for diagnosis and treatment.