What affects the quality of life in patients with Behcet's disease?

The aim of this study was to evaluate the possible associations between quality of life (QoL) and sociodemographic features, disease characteristics and the Behcet's Disease (BD) disease activity of the patients with BD.

One hundred and seven patients with BD were included in this study. Sociodemographic features including age, gender, education level of the patients and the disease characteristics including disease duration, disease onset age, the history BD clinical involvements were recorded. In patients with BD, the BD Current Activity Form was used for the evaluation of disease activity. The short form-36 (SF-36) QoL scale was used to evaluate the QoL in patients with BD. The Student t test, analysis of variance and Spearman's correlation matrix were used for the statistical analysis.

Men showed higher mean scores of role-physical and bodily pain domains of SF-36 than women did (p <0.000 and 0.001). Patients over 41 years of age had higher mean general health scores and university graduates patients had higher mean mental health scores than the other groups (p <0,01). Patients with a disease duration more than 5 years and patients have a younger disease onset age showed lower general health score than the others (p <0,01). Also patients with an anamnesis of uveitis, genital ulceration, erythema nodosum, thrombophlebitis, joint and gastrointestinal system involvement showed lower QoL than the patients without these complaints (p <0,05 and p <0,01). In the analysis of disease activity physical subscores of SF-36 were found to be correlated with fatigue, oral ulceration and joint involvement (p <0,01). Bodily pain showed a correlation with fatigue, headache and more highly with joint involvement (p <0,01 and p <0,001 respectively). General health was correlated with GIS and eye involvement and vitality was found to be correlated with fatigue, patient's and doctor's impression of disease activity (p <0,01). Mental and emotional scores were correlated with oral- genital ulceration, eye and joint involvements (p <0,01).

In addition to demografic features and clinical involvements, BD disease activity can affect QoL in patients with BD. These results highlight the importance of managing the symptoms and the disease activity effectively in order to improve QoL in BD.