J Korean Med Sci.  2001 Oct;16(5):615-618. 10.3346/jkms.2001.16.5.615.

Epidemiologic and Clinical Survey of Behcet's Disease in Korea: the First Multicenter Study

• Bang D
• Lee JH
• Lee ES
• Lee S
• Choi JS
• Kim YK
• Cho BK
• Koh JK
• Won YH
• Kim NI
• Park SD
• Ahn HJ
• Lee YW
• Wang HY
• Lee WW
• Eun HC
• Song ES
• Lee SW
• Lee CW
• Lee CJ
• Park JH
• Song YW
• Kim ST
• Kim CY
• Park JK
• Kwon KS

• KMID: 2157571
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.3346/jkms.2001.16.5.615

Abstract

The prevalence of Behcet's disease is the highest in the East Asian and the Medi-terranean countries. Behcet's disease is also distributed in the Asian countries, but the nationwide survey has not been performed in Korea yet. The Korean Study Group for Behcet's Disease, founded in 1999, conducted a multicenter, retrospective survey on epidemiologic and clinical features of the patients with Behcet's disease from 20 hospitals around the nation from 1997 to 1999. Of 3,497 patients, 1,527 were classified into complete or incomplete type of Behcet's disease according to the revised Shimizu's classification. The sex ratio was 1:1.75 with the female predominance. Geographical distribution showed the highest frequency in Seoul (38.5%). Clinically, 98.8% had oral ulcers, 83.2% had genital ulcers, 84.3% had skin lesions and 50.9% had ocular lesions. As for the minor clinical manifestations, articular symptoms were the most frequent. The pathergy test showed positive in 15.4% of patients and revealed a higher positive rate in males (20.2%) than in females (12.7%). In conclusion, we performed the first multicenter study on Behcet's disease in Korea and revealed the female predominance, higher frequency of ocular lesions, and lower positivity of pathergy test in the patients.

Keyword

Behcet's Disease; Multicenter Study, Korea

MeSH Terms

Adolescence
Adult
Aged
Behcet's Syndrome/complications/*epidemiology
Child
Child, Preschool
Female
Human
Infant
Korea/epidemiology
Male
Middle Age
Prevalence
Retrospective Studies
Sex Distribution