Agmon-Levin N, Ram M, Barzilai O et al. J Autoimmunity 2009;32:261–6.
The link between infectious diseases and the development of autoimmune diseases has been hypothesized in a number of studies. Hepatitis C virus (HCV) is known to contribute to the breakdown of immune tolerance, and is a known cause of chronic liver disease in a large proportion of patients who are infected with the virus. The current authors investigated patients with characterized autoimmune diseases to determine the prevalence of anti-HCV antibodies, and found that the prevalence was increased in patients with auto-immune diseases.
In this international study, Agmon-Levin and colleagues performed enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays to investigate the presence of anti-hepatitis C virus (anti-HCV) antibodies in sera from patients with autoimmune diseases. Using participants from different countries in Europe and Latin America, the sera from 1322 patients were compared with sera from 236 healthy individuals, and were also tested for the presence of antibodies directed against hepatitis B virus (HBV), Helicobacter Pylori, toxoplasma, and cytomegalovirus (CMV).