Efficacy of Infliximab in Intestinal Behcet's Disease: A Korean Multicenter Retrospective Study

Background:Although infliximab is widely accepted as a therapeutic option for inflammatory bowel disease, its therapeutic efficacy for the treatment of intestinal Behcet's disease (BD) is unknown. We investigated the short-term and long-term response rates to infliximab in intestinal BD and predictive factors of sustained treatment response following infliximab treatment.Methods:This study was conducted using a retrospective noncontrolled review of medical records from 8 tertiary hospitals in Korea. We collected clinical, demographic, and laboratory data for patients with 28 patients with intestinal BD who received at least 1 dose of infliximab. Response rates of infliximab at 2, 4, 30, and 54 weeks for each patient and factors predictive of sustained response were investigated. Adverse events were also identified.Results:The median duration of follow-up after initial infliximab infusion was of 29.5 months. The clinical response rates at 2, 4, 30, and 54 weeks were 75%, 64.3%, 50%, and 39.1%, respectively, with clinical remission rates of 32.1%, 28.6%, 46.2%, and 39.1%, respectively. After multivariate analysis, older age at diagnosis (40 yr), female sex, a longer disease duration (5 yr), concomitant immunomodulator use, and achievement of remission at week 4 were found to be predictive factors of sustained response. There was 1 serious infection but no malignancies or deaths in this study.Conclusions:Infliximab was a well-tolerated and effective therapy for patients with moderate-to-severe intestinal BD. Moreover, we found 5 predictive factors associated with sustained response, which might assist in optimal patient selection for infliximab treatment.