Behçet's disease and desensitization by autologous saliva

Among 240 patients with Behçet's disease seen in the Internal Medicine Department of the Ibnou Rochd University Hospital, Casablanca, between January 1981 and April 1988, 44 were selected to study the effects of desensitization by autologous saliva on oral and genital aphthae and on articular manifestations. Thirty of these 44 patients received gradually decreasing dilutions of their own saliva, and 14 control patients received physiological saline. Injections were administered intradermally twice a week during 15 weeks, then once a week during one year, so that the study lasted one and a half year, from October 1986 to April 1988. No improvement of the arthritis was observed, whereas the oral aphthae were improved in 50 % of the patients desensitized by their own saliva. This percentage would have raised some hopes for the treatment of these sometimes disabling lesions were it not for the fact that 50 % of the controls were similarly improved. This suggests that desensitization by saliva has a placebo effect. © 1991.