Thyroid involvement in hepatitis C - associated mixed cryoglobulinemia

The prevalence and clinical features of thyroid involvement in patients with hepatitis C virus-associated mixed cryoglobulinemia (MC+HCV) have been reviewed.

A PubMed Medline search was conducted through December 2011 to identify all studies that reported thyroid involvement in MC+HCV patients. Reference lists of the papers initially detected were manually searched to identify additional relevant reports. Studies had to contain sufficient and clear information to be included.

In MC+HCV patients, the following thyroid autoimmune abnormalities were significantly more frequent than in controls: high levels of serum anti-thyroperoxidase autoantibody (AbTPO); high levels of serum AbTPO and/or anti-thyroglobulin autoantibody; humoral and ultrasonographical signs of thyroid autoimmunity (35% vs 16%); prevalence of subclinical hypothyroidism (11% vs 2%). Also, the prevalence of papillary thyroid cancer has been found higher in MC+HCV patients than in controls, in particular in patients with autoimmune thyroiditis. The involvement of T helper 1 immunity and chemokine (C-X-C motif) ligand 10 (CXCL10) may be the pathogenetic basis of the association between MC+HCV and thyroid autoimmunity.

These results show a high prevalence of thyroid disorders in patients with MC+HCV and point to the need for careful monitoring of thyroid function in these patients.