Introduction:
Behcet’s disease (BD), is a recurrent inflammatory vasculitis mostly seen in young adults. The disease is a chronic, systemic disease and it affects different tissues and organs such as oral and genital mucosa (aphtheous ulcers), skin, joints, vascular structures, central nervous system, gastrointestinal system, and ocular tissues (1). The disease is basically distributed among Mediterranean countries and seen with a frequency of nearly 300 cases per 100.000 population. The ethiology and pathogenesis of BD are not still clearly known. Genetic susceptibility and immunological abnormalities are the most commonly stated possible causes of BD development (2). Vascular involvement is seen in around 7-45 % of all BD cases. Vascular incidences like venous thromboembolism and arterial aneurism are risk factors for mortality and morbidity in BD patients (3). Although clinically well presented, BD diagnosis remains to be a challenge due to lack of specific biomarkers for diagnosis. The metabolic basis of BD is unknown yet and it humpers improvement of laboratory markers or specific parameters to support clinical findings, diagnosis and treatment.
Metabolomics is a branch of post-genomic era and gives crucial information about the phenotype of organisms. In recent years metabolomics has been used to observe disease mechanism, find markers at the early phase to diagnose and monitor the prognose of diseases and new therapeutic targets. In literature, various metabolomics techniques have been used for BD in different perspectives. Park et al. analyzed plasma metabolomic and lipidomic profiles of BD patients and healthy control and they observed lipid metabolism dramatically shifted in Behcet disease (4). Zheng et al. also designed a similar study to analyze the metabolome and lipid profile of serum samples. Their study also covers different patient groups such as rheumatoid arthritis (RA), and systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE). They found that serum linoleic acid and arachidonic acid could be useful biomarkers for BD (5).
In the present work, we focused on several points regarding with BD. First, we analyzed BD and vascular involvement in BD (VBD) to find differences from healthy control groups to understand moleular basis of BD. Moreover, we analyzed the altered metabolome structure of the VBD group according to BD for understanding the mechanism of vascular involvement in BD.