Prevalence of Hepatitis C Virus Infection in Patients with Systemic Lupus Erythematosus: A Case-Control Study

Background and aims: viruses might be one of the causes that trigger systemic lupus erythematosus (sle). steroidtherapy may influence the natural history of virus infections. reports on the association between sle and hepatitis cvirus (hcv) infection are scarce. we conducted a study to investigate the prevalence and clinical significance of hcvinfection in patients with sle.methods: in a prospective study (2003-2005) we evaluated the prevalence and clinical significance of chronic hcvinfection in patients who met the diagnostic criteria of the american college of rheumatology for sle. the bloodsamples of 124 patients were tested for hcv antibodies by an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (elisa). anti-hcvreactive samples were retested for confirmation by abbott matrix immunoblot assays and also for hcv-rna detectionby the polymerase chain reaction (pcr). the control group consisted of first time blood donors referred to the regionalblood transfusion organization.results: six of 124 (4.8%) patients were seropositive for anti-hcv by elisa; of these only 3 cases (2.4%) were positiveby pcr. both elisa and the immunoblot assays may be falsely positive for ongoing hcv infection in patients with sle.a 2.4% prevalence of active hcv infection was found in patients with sle, which did not differ significantly from theprevalence of hcv in the general population (less than 1%). in 'the few positive cases, we observed no adverseinfluence of this infection on the clinical features of the systemic lupus erythematosus.conclusions: our results do not support the participation of hcv infection in the pathogenesis of sle.