The relationship between Behcet's disease and the quality of life for pediatric patients and their parents.

OBJECTIVES: Chronic diseases impact people's quality of life (QoL). Behcet's disease (BD) is a multisystemic chronic disease characterized by vasculitis of various vessels. We aimed to assess QoL in paediatric BD (PEDBD) patients and their parents. METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study from June to December 2022, including PEDBD patients meeting classification criteria. We recorded clinical characteristics and assessed QoL using PedsQL for patients and WHOQOL-Bref for parents. RESULTS: A study of 38 patients (60.5% girls, 39.5% boys), median age 15.5 years (range 10-17), with oral aphthae and various mucocutaneous symptoms: genital ulcers (78.9%), pseudofolliculitis (76.3%), erythema nodosum (23.6%), and some with uveitis (13.1%), vascular (13.1%), neurological (10.5%), and gastrointestinal (5.2%) involvement. All were in remission under treatment. Median PedsQL scores: total 74.5 (range 40-94.8), physical health 76.5 (43-100), psychosocial health 75 (25-92); 14 patients scored below cutoff. Girls had lower physical health scores (P = .004), and disease duration correlated negatively with PedsQL score (r = -0.648, P = .001). Median WHOQOL score for parents: 50 (25-100), with 20 scoring below cutoff. CONCLUSION: One-third of PEDBD children and over half of their parents had low QoL. Disease duration and gender, as with many chronic illnesses, correlated with QoL in PEDBD.