Hulusi Behcet, a Turkish dermatologist first described a disease associating uveitis with genital and oral aphthous lesions, a disease which now bears his name in 1937 (Wechsler and Piette 1199). Fifty years later, BehcetÆs disease had expanded and was recognized as a chronic, multisystem disorder in which vasculitis was the underlying disorder. The disease occurs in the second to fourth decade of life, and rarely in children and adults over the age of 50 years. During the annual meeting of the Medical Society of Athens in 1930, Benediktos Adamantiades, a Greek ophthalmologist from Prussa in Asia Minor, which is now Bursa, Turkey, gave a lecture on a case of ôrelapsing iritis with hypopyonö and described a case of a young man with three cardinal signs of the disease (Zouboulis and Kaklomanis 691). He connected the symptoms of genital ulcers, arthritis, and ocular disease as manifestations of a single disease entity, and correlated it with the findings of others. In 1946, Adamantiades added thrombophlebitis as a fourth sign of the disease, and later presented the first classification of the disease, describing the ocular, mucocutaneous and systemic forms. This has led to the adoption of the term Adamantiades-BehcetÆs disease, since it honors both men who first described the disease and its manifestations.
The etiology of BehcetÆs disease is not really known (Wechsler and Piette 1199). There may be an infectious cause, with suggestions ranging from streptococci to herpes viruses, but there is no record of transmission of the disease. It is believed that BehcetÆs disease may be an autoimmune disease. Triolo et al (459) found high gamma interferon, but not interleukin 4, levels in the supernatants of lymphocytes from patients with active BehcetÆs disease cultured in the presence of cowÆs milk proteins. Levels equaled those obtained from cultures stimulated with PHA. Patients with active BehcetÆs disease also exhibi...