Cardiovascular Involvement in Chronic Hepatitis C Virus Infections - Insight from Novel Antiviral Therapies.

Whereas statistical association of hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection with cardiomyopathy is long known, establishment of a causal relationship has not been achieved so far. Patients with advanced heart failure (HF) are mostly unable to tolerate interferon (IFN)-based treatment, resulting in limited experience regarding the possible pathogenic role of HCV in this patient group. HCV infection often triggers disease in a broad spectrum of extrahepatic organs, with innate immune and autoimmune pathogenic processes involved. The fact that worldwide more than 70 million patients are chronically infected with HCV illustrates the possible clinical impact arising if cardiomyopathies were induced or aggravated by HCV, resulting in progressive HF or severe arrhythmias. A novel path has been opened to finally resolve the long-standing question of cause-effect relationship between HCV infection and cardiac dysfunction, by the recent development of IFN-free, highly efficient, and well tolerable anti-HCV regimens. The new direct-acting antiviral (DAA) agents are highly virus-specific and lack unspecific side-effects upon cardiac function which have always confounded the interpretation of IFN treatment data. The actual frequency of unexplained HF in chronic HCV infection will be determined from a planned large-scale study. Whereas such patients probably constitute a rather small fraction of all those harboring HCV, they have major clinical relevance. It is not yet known which fraction of these patients will significantly benefit from HCV eradication, but this issue will be addressed now in a prospective study.