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. 2025 Mar;20(2):413-421.
doi: 10.1007/s11739-024-03801-6. Epub 2024 Oct 31.

Characterization of potential salivary biomarkers in Behçet's disease

Mohammad S Alrashdan  1   2 , Diana Alnemri  3 , Firas A Al-Qarqaz  4 , Khaldoon M Alawneh  5 , Natheer H Al-Rawi  6 , Amal Bouzid  7 , Mahmoud Khaled Al-Omiri  8   9
Affiliations

Characterization of potential salivary biomarkers in Behçet's disease

Mohammad S Alrashdan et al. Intern Emerg Med. 2025 Mar.

Abstract

Diagnosis of Behçet's disease (BD) has always been a challenging task due to the heterogeneity and complexity of the disease, while available literature on BD biomarkers is largely inconclusive. The aim of this study was to evaluate the expression of a panel of salivary biomarkers in a group of BD patients and test their association with BD. The study population comprised 23 BD patients (12 females and 11 males) and a control group of age and gender-matched healthy individuals. Enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays were used to test the expression of 5 salivary proteins including: interleukin 1β (IL-1β), epidermal growth factor (EGF), endothelin, vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and transferrin (TrF). BD activity was evaluated using the International Society for Behçet's disease (ISBD) current activity form. Salivary endothelin, EGF and VEGF were significantly higher in the BD group compared to controls (16.3 Vs. 7.7 pg/ml, 194.5 Vs. 163.4 pg/ml and 262 Vs. 150.2 pg/ml, p<0.05, respectively) whereas TrF was significantly lower in BD group compared to controls (497 Vs. 2206 pg/ml, p<0.001). The correlation analysis showed a trend of a positive linear association between endothelin expression and both BD activity (r=0.41) and BD activity index score (r=0.4), without reaching statistical significance (p>0.05). In conclusion, salivary TrF, endothelin, VEGF and EGF may represent potential biomarkers for BD. These findings require further validation in larger samples and different activity states of BD.

Keywords: Behçet’s disease; Endothelin; Epidermal growth factor; Saliva; Transferrin; Vascular endothelial growth factor.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval and consent to participate: This study was approved by the institutional review board (IRB) at Jordan University of Science and Technology (approval ID: 461/2016 and 2018/118/62) Consent for publication: All participants received written and verbal information about the nature of the study and written consent was obtained from all of them, prior to examination and saliva collection. Competing interests: None to declare.

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