[A clinical analysis of ocular involvement in 111 cases of Behcet's disease]

To study the ocular manifestations in patients with Behcet's disease(BD).

Medical records at Peking Union Medical College Hospital from 2002 to 2012 were reviewed to identify the patients who were diagnosed as BD with ocular involvement.

One hundred and eleven BD patients developed ocular involvement. Males were more frequently involved, and the male/ female ratio was 2.08: 1. The age at the onset of BD and the time of ocular involvement were (27.6 ± 10.8) and (31.5 ± 10.7) years, respectively. The median interval between the diagnosis of BD and ocular disease was 24 (0, 372) months. Ocular involvement was bilateral in 85.6% patients. About two thirds patients (66.7%) had impaired vision, for example, visual acuity of 0.1 or less was detected in 60.4% patients. Uveitis (90.1%) was the most common findings in BD patients with ocular involvement and the most frequent type of uveitis in both sexes was panuveitis (62.16%). Vision loss, proliferative retinopathy and cataract were more common in men. There was a statistically significantly higher frequency of positive human leukocyte antigen(HLA)-B51 in the male BD with ocular involvement than in the female. All BD patients with uveitis were given systemic corticosteroid or combined immunosuppressive agents. The improvement of visual acuity was seen in 77% BD patients, but the recurrent attacks occurred in 49% patients, resulting in blindness in 25.5% of them. TNFα blockers were given to 19 recurrent uveitis patients, 12 patients improved while two had no response.

The most common ocular involvement in BD was uveitis. Males were more frequently involved with a more severe disease, higher complications and positive HLA-B51 than in females. Glucocorticoids and immunosuppressants were effective to uveitis, but high rate of recurrent inflammatory ocular attacks led to high risk of blindness. TNFα blockers may improve the outcome of recurrent BD uveitis.