Objectives: Familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) is an autoinflammatory disease characterized by recurrent attacks of fever and polyserositis and an autosomal recessive inheritance mode. Up to 15 % of FMF patients are reported to experience perimenstrual attacks. Primary dysmenorrhea could be an incomplete abdominal attack, or patients with dysmenorrhea may have increased frequency of MEFV gene mutation carriage. Therefore, we aimed to evaluate the frequency of MEFV gene mutations in patients with dysmenorrhea.
Methods: Eighty-four patients with primary dysmenorrhea attending consecutively to our gynecology department and 73 healthy female controls selected from hospital staff were included in the study, and MEFV gene mutations were analyzed.
Results: The prevalence of total allelic variants was significantly increased in dysmenorrhea patients (p = 0.015); analysis of individual variant rates revealed a significant increase in the frequency of MEFV gene mutations in dysmenorrhea patients compared with the control group (p = 0.036).
Conclusion: Gynecologists and primary care physicians must be aware of FMF in the differential diagnosis of dysmenorrhea.