Abstract

ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND:
Up to the best of my knowledge, despite the fact that Arabs have a high prevalence of Familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) and its gene, little information is available about the natural history of this disease in Iraqi population.
OBJECTIVE:
This study had been designed to clarify the natural of FMF among Iraqi people.
METHODS:
This study is a Follow up (cohort) study that enrolled 23 patients with FMF, 17 of them were male. The sample had been randomly selected from those had attended Al – Shaheed Al – Sadr Hospital
(Baghdad / Iraq ) during the period from the first of April, 2003 to the 31st of March 2005. All of the patients had been subjected to thorough physical examination and all of the required investigation had been done.
RESULTS:
Age of the patients who had been included in this study ranged between (14 – 59) year old (21.57 + 18.7 year old). All of them were Arab Muslims. Fever and abdominal pain had been observed in all of the patients included in this study at variable time during the disease course. All of the patients included in this (23 patients) had responded well to colchicines treatment (dose of 2 mg/ day). Statistical analysis revealed a significant reduction in the number of attacks per year with the use of prophylactic colchicines (calculated t = 3.94, p value < 0.005).
CONCLUSION:
This study had shown that Iraqi Arabic population might have a batter survival and less risk, if present, of developing amyloiedosis and all of its sequelae. This point needs to be clarified more by doing much larger studies that enroll larger number of Arabs population and for longer period .furthermore, this study had indicated that colchicines is effective in reducing the number of attacks of familial Mediterranean fever per year of follow-up in addition to its efficacy in relieving the acute attack.