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.