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Dimitrios-Petrou Bogdanos, Giorgina Mieli-Vergani, Diego Vergani, Non-Organ-Specific Autoantibodies in Hepatitis C Virus Infection: Do They Matter?, Clinical Infectious Diseases, Volume 40, Issue 4, 15 February 2005, Pages 508–510, https://doi.org/10.1086/427293
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Hepatotropic viruses, such as hepatitis B virus and hepatitis C virus (HCV), can take up permanent residence in the liver and cause serious chronic disease. These viruses are noncytopathic—viral clearance is performed by the host immune response and is associated with concomitant inflammatory liver cell injury. In addition to the liver damage that results from infection control, HCV infection provokes various immunopathological manifestations, such as cryoglobulinemia, autoimmune thyroiditis, rheumatoid arthritis, Sjögren syndrome, glomerulonephritis, lichen planus, polyarteritis nodosa, and diabetes [1]. In patients infected with HCV, evidence of altered immune system homeostasis is further indicated by the high prevalence of non—organ-specific autoantibodies (NOSAs), which is >50% of the infected population, according to some reports [1–8]. Smooth-muscle antibody (SMA) is by far the most frequently detected NOSA in adult and pediatric patients (14%–66%), followed by antinuclear antibody (ANA) (6%–41%) and anti—liver/kidney microsomal antibody type 1 (LKM1; 0%–11%) [1–8]. NOSAs that are less frequently encountered in patients with HCV infection include anti–gastric parietal cell antibody, antimitochondrial antibody (AMA), antineutrophil cytoplasmic antibody, and liver cytosol type 1 autoantibody [1–8].