Cognitive Impairment not only in NeuroBehcet but also for all Behcet Disease Phenotypes

Abstract

Background: Cognitive impairment has been reported for Behcet's Disease (BD) patients, but studies are limited. This study is aimed to investigate neurocognitive profile of Neurobehcet Disease (NBD) patients and BD patients without neurologic involvement (BD-only) in comparison to healthy controls (HC). Patients and method: Totally 49 BD patients (11 NBD, 38 BD-only) and 32 HC were included into the study. After neurological evaluation, all subjects were given a comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests: Self report of neuropsychological condition (by visual analogue scale-VAS, 0-100), RAVLT, Stroop, PASAT, TMT, SDMT, JLOT, DST, COWAT, ACTT, FST. Results: In the comparison of HC to NBD and BD-only subjects, a poorer performance was observed in both group of patients in almost all the neurocognitive tests, except for Stroop interference score. Both group of patients had lower scores on learning, immediate memory, working memory (ACTT), lexical fluency (COWAT) and attention (DST) comparing to healthy subjects (p <= 0.003). The differences between NBD and BD-only patients were observed on response inhibition ability (STROOP-spontaneous corrections; p=0.000, and errors; p=0.002) and learning (RAVLT-sum of five trials; p=0.002). NBD patients had further decrease on free recall (RAVLT), complex visual processing (JLOT), information processing speed (PASAT), attention (TMT-B) and psychomotor speed (TMT-A) (p <= 0.003). Conclusion: Cognitive functions of not only NBD patients but also BD-only patients were worse than control group. Compared to BD-only patients, NBD patients reveal further impairment on memory and executive functions rather than complex visual perception and verbal attention.