anticardiolipin antibody in patients with behçet's disease with and without vascular thrombosis

objective: the clinical value of igg anticardiolipin antibody in patients with behçet's disease with or without vascular thrombosis was evaluated.   methods: igg isotype of anticardiolipin (acl) antibody was assessed in 40 behçet's disease (bd) patients with venous or arterial thrombosis, 40 bd patients without venous or arterial thrombosis and 80 healthy subjects as controls. the levels of igg acl were determined by an indirect elisa method. color doppler sonography, magnetic resonance imaging and conventional angiography were the procedures used for other clinical evaluations. results: out of 40 patients with vascular thrombosis, 20(50%) were positive for low to moderate level of igg acl. in patients without thrombosis 22(55%) were positive for low to moderate level of igg acl while in none (0%) of the healthy subjects the igg acl was positive, neither low nor moderate. the number of patients with headache but having a normal cerebral magnetic resonance imaging (mri), was higher in anticardiolipin positive patients without vascular thrombosis as compared to those with vascular thrombosis, (p = 0.001). arthritis was noticed in both patents groups. 15% of acl positive patients without thrombosis had arthritis as compared to none in acl negative patients without thrombosis (p = 0.02).   conclusion: the results of this study indicate that although the frequency of igg acl was found to be higher in iranian patients with bd in comparison with the previous reports, except in arthritis the observed elevated igg acl does not correlate with clinical disease manifestations, or vascular thrombotic complications.