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What is Behçet’s Disease?

Behçet's Disease (BD) is an auto-inflammatory systemic vasculitis considered as a rare disease. It has no definitive cure; therefore, patients need to be treated with palliative care. BD’s causes are still not fully understood, but it is thought to be hereditary. The main symptoms include recurring mouth ulcers such as canker sores, uveitis, chronic skin lesions and sores in the genital area.

In addition to these symptoms, BD can go on to cause other serious conditions like arterial thrombosis and neurological lesions. Overall, it is a frightening disease which affects almost all of the human body’s systems.

Meet
Dr. Hulusi Behçet

Turkish Doctor Hulusi Behçet, whom we want to pay tribute to, was a dermatologist during the early Turkish Republic. He was the first to report the main findings of the Behçet’s Disease. Unfortunately, the disease was acknowledged by the medical world long after his passing.

Fast,
Easy,
Cheap

With Behcheck performing HLA-B27 test becomes much easier, much rapid and much viable.

Avoid Lengthy PCR

Blood tests require a lengthy PCR workflow, in which the results take up to 1.5

months to reach the patient.

Previous Diagnosis

For a patient to be diagnosed with BD, the symptoms have to meet a certain criteria. These are usually limited to clinical findings commonly observed in many other inflammatory diseases. The only reliable tool considered as a valid diagnosis reference is the pathergy test. The lack of a definitive test prolongs the process and may result in misdiagnosis which further complicates the patient’s access to treatment. Blood tests are also used in patients with suspected BD who don’t meet enough criteria to receive a final diagnosis. Even though these blood tests aren’t a key factor, they are widely used as a supporting indicator.

So what Team Saint-Joseph does to resolve this problem?

We have designed a LFA diagnostic kit named Behcheck aiming to replace these restricting methods. BD has a remarkable correlation with HLA-B51 and HLA-B27 proteins. Our kit will diagnose the HLA-B27 presence in patient samples, and is expected to give results in few minutes. It works just like COVID home test kits: significantly reduces the diagnosis period and creates a cheaper alternative to PCR.

The white globe at the top of the page represents Behçet's Disease prevalence all over the world. The darker the area, the higher prevalence it has.

Picture of the globe is provided by three-globe, an open-source library

The portrait of Hulusi Behçet was drawn by our team member

Statics over Behçet's Disease's prevalence was gathered by referencing the following articles:

‣ Calamia, K., Wilson, F. C., İçen, M., Crowson, C. S., Gabriel, S. E., & Kremers, H. M. (2009). Epidemiology and clinical characteristics of behçet’s disease in the US: A population-based study. Arthritis & Rheumatism, 61(5), 600–604. https://doi.org/10.1002/art.24423

‣ Leonardo, N., & McNeil, J. (2015). Behcet’s Disease: Is There Geographical Variation? A Review Far from the Silk Road. International Journal of Rheumatology, 2015, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1155/2015/945262

‣ Yazıcı, H., Seyahi, E., Hatemi, G., & Yazıcı, Y. (2018). Behçet syndrome: a contemporary view. Nature Reviews Rheumatology, 14(2), 107–119. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrrheum.2017.208

Behcheck is a Lateral Flow Assay Test Kit for the presence of HLA-B27 protein. Studies show that this protein variation remains the most important genetic factor for Behçet’s Disease. Furthermore, this specific factor has the highest relation rate among non-phenotypic factors (determined by pathergy tests).

The repository used to create this website is available at gitlab.igem.org/2023/saint-joseph.

Istanbul Saint-Joseph Private French High School

Dr Esat Işık Cad. No:62 34710

Kadıköy, İstanbul – Türkiye
igem@sj.k12.tr