Immune and autoimmune disorders in HCV chronic liver disease: personal experience and commentary on literature

HCV chronic liver disease can be associated with a plethora of immune and autoimmune perturbations and many authors claim that HCV chronic infection can play an important role in the pathogenesis of these disorders. To compare our experience with literature reports, we performed a retrospective study on the case histories of 265 patients with HCV chronic liver disease, evaluating the type and prevalence of the associated immune and autoimmune manifestations. We found that the patients with HCV chronic liver disease can present arthromyalgias (7.1% of the patients), Sjörgen's syndrome (5.2%), thyroiditis (4.1%), rheumatoid arthritis (2.2%), autoimmune thrombocytopenia (2.6%), mixed cryoglobulinemia (1.5%), autoimmune anemia (0.3%) and oral lichen planus (0.3%). We claim that HCV liver infection is able to induce immune and autoimmune perturbations, without playing a significant role in the pathogenesis of a well-defined disorder.