Papers of the Week

Behçet's disease is a chronic systemic vasculitis with a wide range of clinical findings. It has both autoinflammatory and autoimmune features and manifests with recurrent inflammatory attacks involving the innate immune system. Recently, autoinflammation has started to take place in the pathogenesis of intervertebral disc degeneration. The aim of this study is to evaluate the relationship between intervertebral disc degeneration and Behçet's Disease. We evaluated patients with Behçet's disease who suffered neck or low back pain in the last one year.. Eighty four patients underwent musculoskeletal system examination with MRI imaging of the cervical and lumbar vertebrae, and serum levels of IL6 , IL8 and TNF-α were determined . The mean age was 47.7±11.5 (range 20-68) years. Cervical and/or lumbar herniation was detected in the MRI imaging of 65(77.3%) out of 84 patients. The mean IL8 levels of the group with pain and disc herniation and the group with pain and bulging were statistically significantly higher than the other groups (p = 0.007; p = 0.045, respectively). Chronic inflammation in Behçet's Disease may cause disc degeneration and radicular pain to begin and progress earlier in patients. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.