Classifying patients with Behçet's disease for disease severity, using a discriminating analysis method.

BACKGROUND

Interleukin (IL)-8 has been shown to correlate with the activity of Behçet's disease (BD). The aim of this study was to develop tools as reliable as IL-8 levels in defining BD severity.

METHODS

In total, 32 patients with BD and 16 healthy controls were included in the study. Medical history, physical examination, routine laboratory investigations and measurement of serum IL-8 levels were performed. The patients were classified as groups I and II based on the serum IL-8 levels. The patients were then reassigned to groups based on the predictions through discriminating analysis.

RESULTS

In addition to the differences between patient and control groups, the differences between groups I and II, group I and controls, and group II and controls were statistically significant. The discriminating analysis results showed that the patients had been assigned to groups I and II with 100% accuracy.

CONCLUSION

Discriminating analysis using clinical and routine laboratory findings indicated that 100% of the patients were accurately assigned to the same groups as their IL-8 levels indicated. This suggests that the classification made according to discriminating analysis using these routine variables is a reliable method in determination of the disease severity.