Clinical & Experimental Cardiology
Open Access

Abstract

Association between Red Cell Distribution Width and Disease Activity in Patients with Behcet’s Disease

Semra Akt?rk, Erdal Akt?rk, Ertuğrul Kurtoğlu, Arzu Kaya, Arif G?lkesen, G?l Ayden Kal, T?rkan Tuncer and İsa Sincer

Aims: we aimed to investigate whether red cell distribution width (RDW) can also be used for the assessment of disease activity in Behcet’s disease (BD).
Methods and results: Forty patients with active BD and seventy patients with inactive BD were included in the study. Forty-six healthy volunteers constituted the control group. Hematological parameters, C-reactive protein (CRP) and erythrocyte sedimentation rate (ESR) were analyzed by standard methods. All the individuals underwent comprehensive echocardiographic examination.
Echocardiographic parameters of the study population were similar all groups. ESR, CRP and RDW were significantly higher in active BD patients than in inactive BD patients and controls (33.6±22 vs 15.7±9 vs 5±4.1, 23.4±21.6 vs 5.5±6.2 vs 1.2±0.5 and 17.2±2.5 vs 14.4±1.9 vs 13.2±0.5, p<0.0001 for all, respectively). Moreover, we also found that ESR, CRP and RDW were significantly higher in inactive BD patients when compared with the controls (15.7±9 vs 5±4.1, 5.5±6.2 vs 1.2±0.5 and 14.4±1.9 vs 13.2±0.5, p<0.0001 for all, respectively). There were modest positive correlations between RDW and disease duration (r=0.320, P=0.001).
Conclusion: We demostrated that RDW significant increased in active and inactive BD patients without cardiac involvement. In addition, our study has established that RDW can be used to determine the disease activity state of BD.