Quality of life in patients with Behcet's disease: the impact of major depression

Objective: Behcet's disease (BD) is a multisystemic inflammatory disorder associated with high levels of depressive symptoms and lower quality of life (QoL). In this study, we aimed to investigate the impact of major depression (MD) on the QoL of patients with BD. Method: BD outpatients (n = 25) and psychiatric outpatients (n = 25) with only MD among the Axis I psychiatric disorders, and BD outpatients (n = 25) and healthy controls (n = 25) without any Axis I psychiatric disorder were included in the study. The Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV (SCID-I) was used to determine Axis I psychiatric disorders. Depression and QoL levels were assessed with the Beck Depression Inventory (BDI) and the World Health Organization QoL Assessment-Brief (WHOQOL-BREF), respectively. Results: There was no significant difference with regard to demographic characteristics between the groups. Psychiatric and BD patients with MD had significantly lower overall WHOQOL-BREF subscale scores than BD patients without MD and healthy controls. No significant difference was found in terms of QoL between the groups of psychiatric and BD patients with MD, nor between the groups of BD patients without MD and healthy controls. Overall, there was a significantly negative correlation between all WHOQOL-BREF subscale and BDI scores in BD patients. Conclusion: The study suggests that concurrent MD has a negative impact on QoL of BD patients and that QoL is negatively correlated with the severity of depressive symptoms. (c) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.