Iron metabolism and hepatitis C virus

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Infection with hepatitis C virus (HCV) poses a serious health care problem worldwide and is the leading cause of blood-transmitted chronic hepatitis, liver cirrhosis and hepatocellular cancer. The course of HCV infection is affected by various factors, including the body's iron status. Here we will employ a cell culture model for HCV replication (infectious "replicon") to study mechanisms by which HCV affects systemic and cellular iron homeostasis. We recently showed that administration of iron to HCV infected cells dramatically decreases viral replication. In earlier experiments, we also demonstrated that iron inhibits the function of the HCV RNA polymerase, a protein essential for viral replication. These findings are unexpected, considering that iron overload aggravates viral hepatitis C; thus, our data suggest that the adverse clinical effects of iron on HCV-infected patients are indirect.