Behçet's disease with intestinal involvement: case-based review.

Behçet's disease (BD) is a rare (especially in East Europe, Ukraine) systemic vasculitis of blood vessels of varying calibers throughout the body that affects various organs. The variability of the clinical features requires the involvement of doctors of different specialties in the management of such patients. The work was aimed to conduct a literature review of the intestine involvement and skin lesions in BD based on the clinical case with bloody diarrhea at the onset, and to assess the frequency of development of various clinical syndromes in intestinal BD. This is an attempt at describing a manifestation of BD with colitis and to emphasize the necessary revision of BD diagnostic criteria with special attention to early manifestations of BD with gastrointestinal tract involvement.

Treatment of rheumatoid arthritis with electromagnetic millimeter waves applied to acupuncture points--a randomized double blind clinical study.

The aim of the study was to evaluate the efficacy and safety of electromagnetic millimeter waves (MW) applied to acupuncture points in patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA). Twelve patients with RA were exposed to MW with power 2.5 mW and band frequency 54-64 GHz. MW were applied to the acupuncture points of the affected joints in a double blind manner. At least 2 and maximum 4 points were consecutively exposed to MW during one session. Total exposure time consisted of 40 minutes. According to the study design, group I received only real millimeter wave therapy (MWT) sessions, group II only sham sessions. Group III was exposed to MW in a random cross-over manner. Pain intensity, joint stiffness and laboratory parameters were recorded before, during and immediately after the treatment. The study was discontinued because of beneficial therapeutic effects of MWT. Patients from group I (n=4) reported significant pain relief and reduced joint stiffness during and after the course of therapy. Patients from group II (n=4) revealed no improvement during the study. Patients from group III reported the changes of pain and joint stiffness only after real MW sessions. After further large-scale clinical investigations MWT may become a non-invasive adjunct in therapy of patients with RA.