著者

Matsumori Akira Ohashi Naohiro Nishio Ryosuke Kakio Tadashi Hara Masatake Furukawa Yutaka Ono Koh Shioi Tetsuo Hasegawa Koji Sasayama Shigetake

出版者

社団法人日本循環器学会

雑誌

Japanese circulation journal (ISSN:00471828)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.63, no.6, pp.433-438, 1999-05-20

被引用文献数

2 23

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The familial of hypertrophic cardiomyopathy(HCM)is attributed to mutations in the genes for contractile proteins, but the etiology of non-familial form remains unknown. This study was designed to examine the clinical features, histopathologic changes, and hepatitis C virus(HCV)genomes in patients with HCM associated with HCV infection. Anti-HCV antibody was present in the sera of 9 of 65 patients(13.8%)with HCM versus 2.41% in a control population of voluntary blood donors in Japan, a statistically significant difference (p<0.0001). Among these 9 patients, 6 had ace-of-spades-spaped deformities of the left ventricle with apical hypertrophy. Myocardial fibrosis was found in all patients, and mild cellular infiltration was observed in 5patients. Type 1b HCV RNA was present in the sera of 5 of the 9 patients. The copy number of HCV was 5.5×10^3-8.6×10^5 genomes/ml serum, and multiple clones of HCV were detected in the sera of each patient by an analysis of the hypervariable regions using fluorescent single-strand conformation polymorphism. Positive strands of HCV were found in the hearts of 5 patients, and negative strands in the hearts of 2 patients. A high prevalence of HCV infection was found in patients with HCM, particularly of the apical variety, suggesting that HCV is an important causal agent in the pathogenesis of the disease.