Yildirim Mehmet, Baysal Vahide, Inaloz H Serhat, Doguc Duygu
University of Suleyman Demirel, School of Medicine, Department of Dermatology, Isparta, Turkey.
J Dermatol. 2004 Dec;31(12):983-8. doi: 10.1111/j.1346-8138.2004.tb00641.x.
Behçet's disease (BD) is an inflammatory multisystem disorder characterized by recurrent oral and genital aphthous ulcers, arthritis, uveitis, and thrombophlebitis; it can involve several organs. However, recurrent aphthous stomatitis (RAS) can be seen without a confirmed diagnosis of BD. Moreover, there is no way of predicting whether a patient with RAS will develop BD. Nitric oxide (NO) is a free radical synthesized from L-arginine by one of the family of nitric oxide synthase (NOS) enzymes. Increased production of NO during several inflammatory and infectious processes has been recently postulated. Our aim was to investigate the serum NO levels in patients with active and inactive BD and RAS. Forty-six patients with BD, 30 patients with RAS and 30 healthy controls were enrolled in the study. The patients with BD were separated into two groups: clinically active (n = 24) and inactive (n = 22). A blood sample was collected from all subjects in order to determine their serum NO levels. In patients with active BD, higher serum levels of NO metabolite were found in comparison with patients with inactive BD, in patients with RAS, or healthy controls (p < 0.05). We also found higher serum NO metabolite levels in patients with RAS than in healthy controls (p < 0.05). In patients with inactive BD, statistically significant higher levels of serum NO levels were found in comparison with the control group (p < 0.05). However, we found no statistically significant difference between the patients with inactive BD and RAS, which indicated that inactive BD cannot be distinguished from RAS by serum NO levels. We conclude that serum NO levels may be an important marker for estimating the severity of BD. However, further studies are needed to confirm our findings.
白塞病（BD）是一种炎症性多系统疾病，其特征为复发性口腔和生殖器阿弗他溃疡、关节炎、葡萄膜炎和血栓性静脉炎；它可累及多个器官。然而，在未确诊BD的情况下也可见复发性阿弗他口炎（RAS）。此外，无法预测患有RAS的患者是否会发展为BD。一氧化氮（NO）是由一氧化氮合酶（NOS）家族中的一种酶从L-精氨酸合成的自由基。最近推测在几种炎症和感染过程中NO的产生会增加。我们的目的是研究活动期和非活动期BD及RAS患者的血清NO水平。46例BD患者、30例RAS患者和30名健康对照者纳入本研究。BD患者分为两组：临床活动期（n = 24）和非活动期（n = 22）。采集所有受试者的血样以测定其血清NO水平。与非活动期BD患者、RAS患者或健康对照相比，活动期BD患者的血清NO代谢产物水平更高（p < 0.05）。我们还发现RAS患者的血清NO代谢产物水平高于健康对照（p < 0.05）。与对照组相比，非活动期BD患者的血清NO水平在统计学上显著更高（p < 0.05）。然而，我们发现非活动期BD患者和RAS患者之间无统计学显著差异，这表明无法通过血清NO水平区分非活动期BD和RAS。我们得出结论，血清NO水平可能是评估BD严重程度的一个重要标志物。然而，需要进一步研究来证实我们的发现。
