Development of screening approaches for the presence of behcet's disease-specific autoantibodies

Behçet's disease was first described by Turkish dermatologist Hulusi Behçet in 1937 as a disease characterized by a triple symptom complex consisting of recurrent oral aphthous ulcers, genital ulcers, and uveitis. Behçet's disease is a systemic inflammatory disease frequently seen in middle and far eastern societies. Its prevalence varies according to societies. The etiology of the disease is unknown. Although many autoantigens have been proposed in the pathogenesis of the disease, none of them have been shown to share a common epitope with the bacterial HSP-65, which is thought to be associated with the disease's etiology. In the study on which the thesis project is based, it was determined that the sera of Behçet's patients, which were shown to be immune reactive against neurofilament medium (NF-M), cross-react with bacterial HSP-65. Within the scope of the proposed thesis, it is aimed to develop a sensitive and highly specific peptide-based screening method that will enable the presence of autoantibodies detected in a limited patient population to be screened in a larger patient population in order to investigate the specificity of Behçet's disease.