IL-1 Inhibition May Be an Alternative Treatment for Behcet's Save

Behcet's disease is difficult to manage, especially if the goal is to avoid corticosteroids. It's often been included as an autoinflammatory disorder, many of which are IL-1 responsive, and there are case reports of improvement especially for neurologic or ocular disease when IL-1 inhibition has been tried.

A 30-patient retrospective review evaluated the efficacy of anakinra or canakinumab as first-line therapy in Behcet's disease. Thirteen patients demonstrated remission for 12 months, 6 remaining on their initial drug and the others requiring adjustments.  Only 15% had adverse reactions (mostly injection site reactions with anakinra) and no serious adverse events were seen.