The prevalence of Behçet's disease above the age of 10 years. The results of a pilot study conducted at the Park Primary Health Care Center in Ankara, Turkey.

PURPOSE: The aim of this study was to determine the prevalence of Behçet's disease above the age of 10 years by means of a population-based study. METHODS: The epidemiological investigation (cross-sectional study) was made between May 1997 and May 1998 at the Park Primary Health Care Center, which is one of the education and research divisions of the Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Ankara University. The research aimed to cover all 17,256 (49.2% male, 50.8% female) inhabitants over 10 years of age living in this area. The screening team first surveyed and selected patients with recurrent aphthous stomatitis. These patients were further examined, free of charge, in the Preventive Ophthalmology Unit of the Public Health Center, at Ibni Sina Hospital's Behçet Center or in other clinics if necessary. In this study the International Study Group For Behçet's disease Criteria were used. RESULTS: As the final result of the screening, 11 female and 5 male patients with Behçet's disease were found (female/male = 2.2). These patients represented 9 already known and 7 newly diagnosed cases of Behçet's disease. The prevalence of Behçet's disease over 10 years of age is 0.11%. CONCLUSION: The existing regional prevalance studies conducted in Turkey have indicated that the real number of Behçet's patients in our country is markedly higher than the number of registered patients. Therefore the National Behçet's Disease Commity and Surveillance System was founded by our research group in December 1999.

14C-dimethoate residues in olive oil during oil processing.

An olive tree was treated twice in the field with 14C-dimethoate (237.7 muCi, 2.4 g) and 14C residues were determined in the olive fruits at harvest. The fruits were crushed and pressed to extract the crude oil, then refined by neutralization, bleaching and deodorization. The crude oil contained 14.1% of the total 14C in the olive fruits. Neutralization resulted in a reduction of 14C by about 50% of the total 14C residues in oil. Bleaching and deodorization processes further reduced the 14C residues and the refined oil contained 31.6% (which corresponds to 4.4% of 14C residues of the total 14C in olive fruits) of the total 14C in the crude oil. Industrially extracted crude oil was fortified with 14C-dimethoate at 1.8 mg kg-1 (0.02 muCi) level and subjected to the same refining process. A sharp decrease in the amount of 14C was observed by neutralization and the amount of 14C remaining in the refined oil was about 7.3% of the total 14C in the crude fortified oil. The data suggest that the 14C residues in the aged and the fortified oil amples were not of the same nature. The terminal 14C residue in the refined oil obtained from the field experiment did not contain dimethoate and/or its oxon.