title: Low prevalence of juvenile-onset Behcet's disease with uveitis in East/South Asian people.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  There is little information on the demographic and clinical characteristics of Behçet's disease in children in different parts of the world. We sought to provide this information through a questionnaire survey of specialist eye centres.
  
  
  METHODS
  Descriptive questionnaires were collected from 25 eye centres in 14 countries. The questionnaire surveyed details of juvenile-onset Behçet's disease with uveitis. Ethnic groups, clinical features, treatments and prognosis of paediatric-age Behçet's disease were examined on a worldwide scale.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The clinical data of 135 juvenile-onset and 1227 adult-onset patients with uveitis were collected. The average age of disease diagnosis in the children was 11.7 years old. Of the ethnic groups identified 54% were from Middle East, 43% from Europe, but only 2% from East/South Asian countries. By contrast, 19.2% of adult patients were from East or South Asia. The frequency of genital ulcers in juvenile patients was 38.7%, which was significantly lower than in adult cases (53.5%; p<0.01).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Behçet's disease with uveitis was less common in children than in adults in East/South Asia. Although the clinical features of the systemic disease were similar in children and adults, there was a lower frequency of genital ulceration in children.
authors: Department of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences, Hokkaido University Graduate School of Medicine, Sapporo 060-8638, Japan. nobukita@med.hokudai.ac.jp
authors: N
authors: N
authors: Kitaichi
authors: A
authors: A
authors: Miyazaki
authors: M R
authors: MR
authors: Stanford
authors: D
authors: D
authors: Iwata
authors: H
authors: H
authors: Chams
authors: S
authors: S
authors: Ohno
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D017668:Age of Onset; D001210:Asia, Southeastern / Q000208:ethnology; D001528:Behcet Syndrome / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000208:ethnology*; D002648:Child; D005060:Europe / Q000208:ethnology; D005202:Asia, Eastern / Q000208:ethnology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008877:Middle East / Q000208:ethnology; D015995:Prevalence