Chronic hepatitis C and the risk for atherosclerotic and cardiomyopathic heart disease

Table 2 A summary table for key studies and their conclusions

Ref.	Year	Study design	Findings	Limitations
Wang et al[74]	2024	Cross-sectional study	HCV group without metabolic syndrome had higher odds ratio of 2.75	While CT is a widely used method, it primarily detects advanced atherosclerosis (calcified plaques) and may miss earlier stages of the disease
Chang et al[56]	2022	Population-based cohort	HCV patients have a high incidence of CVD, though it is lower than that of ALD and NAFLD	The findings may not be directly generalizable
Petta et al[9]	2011	Case-control	Severe hepatic fibrosis is associated with a high risk of early carotid atherosclerosis in G1 CHC patients	Selection bias in the recruitment of the control population and limited generalizability
Lee et al[72]	2019	Systematic review and meta-analysis	Patients with HCV had 28% higher risk compared to those without HCV infection	Limited generalizability on global scale, and significant heterogeneity
Wen et al[75]	2019	Systematic review and meta-analysis	The overall RR of 1.25 in the cohort studies, higher OR of 1.94 in these studies suggests a stronger association between HCV and CAD compared to the cohort studies	Small sample size between studies and different criteria for diagnosing CHC
Badawi et al[76]	2018	Survey analysis	HCV infection was significantly associated with a 25%-3.5% absolute risk increases of 10-year CVD after adjusting for sociodemographic and cardiometabolic risk factors	Confounding variables such as alcohol use, and drug use were not controlled
Roed et al[65]	2014	Cross-sectional study	Higher carotid intima media thickness in CHC patients with small difference of means	Confounding variables such as physical activity, diet, medication use, family history of CAD, and genetic predisposition were not controlled

HCV: Hepatitis C virus; CHC: Chronic hepatitis C; CAD: Coronary artery disease; NAFLD: Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease; ALD: Alcoholic liver disease; CT: Computed tomography.