To delineate the clinical features and long-term outcomes of pediatric Vascular Behçet’s Disease (VBD).
Approach:
Case Presentation: Retrospective review of five female pediatric patients with VBD, focusing on clinical manifestations, vascular involvement, and treatment outcomes.
Key Findings:
All patients exhibited universal arterial involvement, with some showing concurrent venous disease.
Clinical manifestations included mucocutaneous symptoms like erythema nodosum, oral and genital ulcers, persistent fever, and abdominal pain.
Laboratory tests showed elevated inflammatory markers in all cases.
Vascular imaging revealed vascular wall thickening and luminal stenosis.
All patients responded favorably to glucocorticoids combined with immunosuppressants or biologic agents.
Interpretation:
Early diagnosis and proactive vascular screening followed by combination immunosuppressive therapy were associated with favorable clinical and radiological outcomes.
Limitations:
Causal conclusions cannot be drawn due to the lack of a control group.
The study is limited by its small sample size and retrospective design.
Conclusion:
Increased awareness of VBD is critical for prompt intervention and improved patient prognosis.
Higher oxidative balance was associated with lower mortality, while greater systemic inflammation was linked to increased risk in a US cohort of patients with rheumatoid arthritis.
A large audit of biomedical publications suggests fabricated references are increasingly appearing in peer-reviewed papers — often in ways that are difficult for reviewers and readers to detect.
