Abstract
Behcet’s disease (BD) is a chronic inflammatory disorder that can affect many systems in the body. Cardiac involvement increases the risk of cardiovascular mortality and occurs in 1%-5% of patients with BD. Ventricular arrythmias are believed to be the cause of this increased risk of cardiovascular mortality and it is also thought to be related with cardiac autonomic dysfunction. Heart rate turbulence (HRT) is a new predictor of cardiac autonomic activity. HRT is an independent and powerful predictor of mortality. In this study, we investigated the cardiac autonomic activity which can be determined by HRT in patients with BD. Forty patients with BD (20 men, mean age: 40 ± 9 years, range: 27-55 years) were diagnosed according to the International Study Group Criteria (ISGC) and gender and age matched healthy volunteers (20 men, mean age: 39 ± 8 years, range: 26-56 years) were included in this study. All of the participants (patients and controls) underwent 24 hours Holter electrocardiogram. HRT parameters, turbulence onset (TO) and turbulence slope (TS) were calculated with HRT (View Version 0.60-0.1 of Software Program). There were no significant differences in TO and TS values between patients with BD and control subject (TO-BD: 0.014 ± 0.03, TO-Control: 0.011 ± 0.04; TS-BD: 7.88 ± 4.9, TS-Control: 9.42 ± 6.7 respectively). Although increased cardiovascular mortality rates in BD have been shown in many studies, HRT values—detecting the risk of sudden death—do not seem to be altered in this disease.
Highlights
Behcet’s disease (BD) is a chronic disorder characterized by acute exacerbations affecting multi-organ system
We aimed to evaluate cardiac autonomic function by measuring Heart rate turbulence (HRT) method which could be responsible for the higher rates of cardiovascular deaths in patients with BD
Our results were in consistent with the results of Kirimli et al We found that normal cardiac autonomic activity is consistent with Kirimli et al But our results were different from the other two studies
Summary
Behcet’s disease (BD) is a chronic disorder characterized by acute exacerbations affecting multi-organ system. It is an inflammatory disorder which can be classified as autoimmune or autoinflammatory disease. Etiology has not been clarified yet, the most acceptable opinion includes genetic background (Human leukocyte antigen (HLA)-B 51, one of the numerous split antigens of HLA-B 5) and some microorganisms or their antigens such as; herpes simplex virus, streptococci, staphylococci, or Escherichia species [1]. Cardiovascular involvement characterized with endocarditis, myocarditis, pericarditis, intracardiac thrombi, endomyocardial fibrosis, coronary arteritis, myocardial infarction and valve disease may occur rarely [4]-[8]
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