Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Viral Hepatitis Journal, cilt.26, sa.3, ss.167-170, 2020 (ESCI)
Objectives: Chronic hepatitis C (CHC) infection considered to beassociated with an increased risk of coronary artery disease (CAD).However, there is not enough data concerning this association indiabetics. Thus, this study investigated the effect of chronic HCVinfection and its clearance on the CAD risk in diabetics.Materials and Methods: This was a retrospective case-controlstudy conducted at the Mustafa Kemal University, Departmentof Infectious Diseases and Clinical Microbiology, Hatay, betweenJanuary 2010 and January 2015. The presence of CAD and its mainrisk factors such as age, sex, hypertension (HT), hyperlipidaemia(HL), chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and chronic renal failurewere compared between 100 HCV infected diabetic patients and100 uninfected diabetic controls. The HCV-infected patients werefurther divided into a viral clearance group and a persistence group,and the CAD prevalence was also compared between these twogroups.Results: Patients with CHC were predominantly male (55% vs39%) and predominantly older than 60 years of age (68% vs51%) in comparison with controls. The HCV-infected group had asignificantly lower prevalence of CAD, HT and HL compared withcontrols (p<0.001). Furthermore, no significant differences werefound between groups with viral clearance and persistent viremiafor the prevalence of CAD (p=0.80).Conclusion: Our data suggested that chronic HCV infection mightbe a protective factor against CAD and successful HCV eradicationmay not increase the risk of CAD in diabetics. These findings indicatea need for additional studies to clarify the effects of HCV infectionand its clearance on the risk of CAD in diabetics