Objective: Since Behçet's disease (BD) is a systemic vasculitis, it may deteriorate the quality of life of the patients. We aimed to investigate the relationship between the disease severity and the quality of life in patients with BD.
Methods: We studied 195 BD patients and 195 healthy controls who were matched with regard to age, gender and socio-economic status. Krause score was calculated to assess disease severity, while Short-form-36 (SF-36) and The World Health Organization Quality of Life (WHOQOL-100) were used to evaluate the quality of life in BD.
Results: The overall SF-36 and WHOQOL-100 scale scores, as well as their domains were significantly lower in BD patients. In BD patients, "general health", "role-physical", domains of SF-36, and "psychological", "level of independence", "environment", "environmental-public" domains of WHOQOL-100 showed significantly negative linear correlations with Krause scores. In BD patients with arthritis, the scores of "general health", "physical functioning", "role emotional" domains of SF-36, and the scores of "psychological", "level of independence" and "social relations" domains of WHOQOL-100 were significantly worse than without arthritis. The scores of "pain" domain of SF-36 and "level of independence" domain of WHOQOL-100 were significantly worse in BD patients with vascular involvement, while the scores of "mental health" domain of SF-36 and "psychological" domain of WHOQOL-100 were significantly worse in BD patients with eye involvement.
Conclusion: Based on the evaluation of SF-36 and WHOQOL-100 scores, quality of life is impaired and related with disease severity in BD. Arthritis, eye involvement and vascular involvement seem to contribute to this impairment.