The effect of colchicine treatment on complete blood cell count-based parameters in patients with Behçet's disease

Abstract

Aim: Behçet's disease (BD) is a systemic disease, with still unknown etiology and pathogenesis and varying disease presentations, characterized by recurrent oral aphthae, followed by genital ulcers, arthritis, variable skin and ocular lesions, gastrointestinal and central nervous system involvement, as well as, vascular disease. Colchicine is one of the oldest remedies still in use today. The study aimed to investigate the effect of colchicine on levels of the complete blood cell count-based parameters in BD.
 Material and Method: A total of 117 (participants 60 healthy control and 57 patients with BD) were recruited from the rheumatology department in a single-center case-control study. The laboratory data were obtained from the electronic registration database. Laboratory findings of patients and healthy controls were evaluated. In addition, patients with BD were evaluated for these parameters before colchicine therapy and after 3-month from the beginning of colchicine treatment.
 Results: The levels of inflammatory markers such as neutrophil count, neutrophil to lymphocyte ratio (NLR), C-reactive protein (CRP), erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR), and systemic immune-inflammation index (SII), significantly higher than the control group before treatment, decreased to similar levels with the control group in the third month of colchicine use. However, red blood cell distribution width (RDW), mean platelet volume (MPV), and plateletcrit (PCT) were still statistically significantly different from the control group in BD patients.
 Conclusion: SII, CRP, ESR, and NLR are useful parameters to evaluate the colchicine response of patients with mucocutaneous BD.