1. Treat to target in Behcet's disease: Should we follow the paradigm of other systemic rheumatic diseases?
- Author
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Fragoulis, George E., Bertsias, George, Bodaghi, Bahram, Gul, Ahmet, van Laar, Jan, Mumcu, Gonca, Saadoun, David, Tugal-Tutkun, Ilknur, Hatemi, Gulen, and Sfikakis, Petros P.
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BEHCET'S disease , *RHEUMATISM , *COMPOSITE construction , *DISEASE remission , *BIOLOGICALS - Abstract
During the last decades the efficacy of biologic agents, mainly of anti-TNFs, in controlling the activity of serious manifestations of Behcet's Disease (BD) has been established. On the other hand, the clinical heterogeneity of BD has precluded the validation of a widely-accepted composite index for disease assessment and for target disease-state definitions, such as low disease activity and remission, and the testing of their implementation in clinical practice. Therefore, in contrast to other systemic rheumatic diseases, a treat-to-target strategy has not yet been developed in BD. There are several challenges towards this approach, including standardization of outcome measures for assessing the disease activity in each-affected organ and construction of a composite disease activity index. The challenges for the development of a treat-to-target strategy and possible solutions are discussed in this position paper, which stemmed from a round table discussion that took place in the 19th International Conference on BD. • Expression and severity of the clinical features of BD varies. Therefore measuring overall disease activityis challenging • Efforts are ongoing to determine the best instruments to assess disease activity in BD • Given the emerging therapies in BD, definition of therapeutic targets and development of treat-to-target strategy is needed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2023
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