Causes of vasculitis. ?

[Michelle_Cheatley]

A friend of mine suffers with vasculitis, my understanding is very little to be honest, but can someone tell me if high homocysteine is a cause. ?

[PMRpro]

I understand that it may be involved in Behcets disease but whether it is involved in other forms of vasculitis I don't know. In Behcets it may be involved in thrombosis as raised levels are a risk factor for atherosclerosis. That doesn't mean that it causes the inflammation though, it means it causes something that happens in that disease.

[Hidden]

The best guess is Vascultis has a genetic base ( multiple genes are involved ) and then we meet an environmental trigger such as infection, stress, pregnancy or life event etc.

There are also forms of secondary Vasculitis such as drug induced or associated with other auto immune diseases such as Lupus or RA.

There are over 18 different types of Vasculitis, they all cause inflamation of the lining of blood vessels, and are grouped according to the size of blood vessel they affect ( small, medium and large ). The way Vasculitis affects the patient depends on the size of blood vessels and organs affected. It's a rare, complex and potentially life and organ threatening disease. I have never heard of an association with homocysteine, you will need to do a Google search to see if there has been research done. The causes of Vasculitis are multi factorial so it's unlikely that one thing is responsible.

[Hidden in reply to Hidden]

Should have said a good source of information on all things Vasculitis is the VUK website.

vasculitis.org.uk/about-vas...