Research Article - Biomedical Research (2017) Volume 28, Issue 12

Which one is best? platelet/lymphocyte ratio, neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio or both in determining deep venous thrombosis in behcet' s disease?

Introduction: Behcet's Disease, described in 1937 by Hulusi Behcet, is characterized by oral and genital ulcers, uveitis, arthritis, and involvement of the gastrointestinal tract, central nervous system, and blood vessels, with an unknown aetiology. Although there are many reports about a high neutrophil/ lymphocyte ratio in Behcet's disease; to our knowledge, there is no research in the literature (PubMed database) that evaluates both neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio and platelet/lymphocyte ratio for the patients with thrombosis in Behcet's disease.

Patients and Methods: Overall 331 patients, 61 Behcet's disease patients with a thrombotic complication and 270 Behcet' s disease patients without a thrombotic complication-as the control group-, were included the study.

Results: Of the 61 patients with thrombosis, there was a very significant difference between the genders; 51 (83.6%) were males while only 10 (16.4%) were females (p<0.0001). The median neutrophil/ lymphocyte ratio of the patients with thrombosis was 2.94 (0.9-26.96) while it was 1.78 (0.14-24.29) in the patients without thrombosis. The median platelet/lymphocyte ratio of the patients with thrombosis was 209.95 (64.84-948.21) while it was 118.06 (54.77-393.33) among the patients without thrombosis. There was a statistically significant difference among the patients with and without thrombosis according to the median neutrophil/lymphocyte ratio and platelet/lymphocyte ratio (p<0.0001).

Discussion: Thrombosis was significantly higher in males and female sex was found to be a negative factor against development of thrombosis in both univariate and multivariate analyses. There was no statistically significant difference among the patients with and without thrombosis by means of age. The mean Platelet count was significantly higher in patients with thrombosis. It was found to be a risk factor in univariate analyses while it had no effect on multivariate analyses. Increased platelet/lymphocyte ratio was found to be the most important factor for predicting thrombosis.

Author(s): Fatma Erden, Hatice Karagoz, Atil Avci, Deniz Avci, Ali Cetinkaya, Siyar Bahadir, Abdulsamet Erden

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