La maladie de Behçet chez la femme

Purpose

Behçet's disease (BD) is a multisystemic inflammatory disease characterized, on the one hand, by the frequency of benign mucocutaneous and articular manifestations, and on the other hand by the severity of ocular, neurological, vascular and digestive manifestations which may threaten functional or vital prognosis. The male BD predominance is obvious in many retrospective studies and a few studies only have focused on BD in women.

Methods

In this study, we report the epidemiological, clinical, outcome and therapeutic data of a series of 71 female BD compared to a series of 111 male BD. This retrospective study was conducted in the internal medicine department of Monastir university hospital over a 19-year period (1990 to 2008), including all patients followed-up and treated for BD.

Results

The comparison of clinical manifestations of BD between men and women showed the predominance of erythema nodosum (P = 0.016), necrotic pseudofolliculitis (P = 0.001), and joint involvement (P = 0.009) in women, while genital ulcers (P = 0.039), ocular involvement (P = 0.003) and vascular (P = 0.002) involvement were more common in men.

Conclusion

Our results confirmed the results of previous studies regarding the benign nature of BD in women compared to men.