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The association of Behçet’s disease (BD) and ankylosing spondylitis (AS) has been reported in many cases1-7. We previously reported that AS was associated with BD in Iranian patients8. We found AS in our BD patients to be 8 to 9 times more prevalent than in the general population of Iran9.

It seems that AS is found especially in BD patients who carry the HLAB27 antigen. The prevalence of HLA-B27 is extremely high among patients with both BD and spondyloarthropathy3-10. In our patients, the prevalence of HLA-B27 in BD patients with AS was extremely high in comparison with BD patients without AS (44.5% versus 9.5%, p< 0.00001). On the other hand, in the study of Ben Taarit et al, HLA-B27 was not found in their two BD patients who had AS11.