Hepatitis C virus infection--its role in pathogenesis.

Open Access
Publisher Website
Google Scholar
Abstract
In this issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases, Hansen et al. extend their earlier observations [1] reporting a 2.4‐fold increased overall mortality in relation to anti-hepatitis C virus (HCV) positivity in HIV‐positive patients. They hypothesized that HIV/HCV coinfection is a marker for a familial risk factor promoting premature death that is independent of the pathogenicity of HCV. To explore this hypothesis, they identified 437 siblings of HIV/HCV‐coinfected patients, whom they compared with 1856 siblings of HIV‐monoinfected patients and 285,509 siblings of matched uninfected control subjects. Importantly, they found a significantly higher mortality among siblings of HIV/HCV‐coinfected patients than among siblings of HIV‐monoinfected patients or of control subjects, and they concluded that HCV infection might merely be a marker for disadvantageous familial factors independent of the pathogenicity of HCV [2].

This publication has 0 references indexed in Scilit: