Wet-cupping in the treatment of recalcitrant oral and genital ulceration of Behçet disease: A randomized controlled trial

Abstract

The recalcitrant oral ulceration (OU) and genital ulceration (GU) of Behçet disease (BD) can be very distressing and no standard therapy has been established yet. To determine the efficacy of Wet-cupping (W-C) as adjuvant treatment of oral and genital ulceration of BD, 24 patients were included in this prospective and comparative study. All patients included in the study had a recalcitrant oral and/or genital ulceration BD to conventional drug treatment. Treatment with W-C decreased significantly the number of episodes per month, number of ulcers per episode and duration of the episode after 06 months of conventional treatment associated with the W-C of OU and GU compared with the group treated only with conventional treatment. In patients with OU and GU, the difference in improvement ratings between therapy with W-C group and the group treated only with conventional treatment was statistically significant, 91,7% of patients in intervention group had a complete response to oral aphtose, versus 25% of control group. For aphtosis genital response was complete in 100% cases in Intervention group, versus 25% in control group. Our results showed that combining W-C plus conventional treatment shows great promise as an effective treatment for oral and genital ulceration in patients with Behçet disease.