To measure the intestinal permeability in patients with Behçet's syndrome (BS) and to compare the results with those obtained from healthy and diseased controls.
The study group comprised 34 patients with BS without known gastrointestinal disease. Ten patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS), 6 with inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), 17 with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), and 15 healthy subjects (HC) constituted the controls. All patients received 100 microCi (3.7 MBq) of chromium-51 EDTA ((51)Cr-EDTA) as a radioactive tracer after a 72 hour abstinence from all drugs. The percentage of the isotope excreted in a 24 hour urinary specimen was the measure of permeability.
The percentage (SD) rate of excretion of (51)Cr-EDTA was 4.6 (2.6) in BS, 6 (2.4) in AS, 5.2 (1. 9) in IBD, 5.56 (1.78) in SLE, and 2.3 (1) in healthy controls. (Analysis of variance: f=6.4, p=0.0002. BS v HC, AS v HC, SLE v HC significant.)
The intestinal permeability in BS was significantly more than that seen among the healthy controls. Similar results in all the diseased controls cast doubt on its specificity.