A meta-analysis of patients with chronic hepatitis C treated with interferon-alpha to determine the risk of autoimmune thyroiditis.

Objective: In order to analyze the effect on autoimmune thyroiditis (AT) of current anti-hepatitis C virus (HCV) treatment in HCV-infected patients, we performed a systematic review with meta-analysis of the available literature. The present meta-analysis was conducted to evaluate the strength and the consistency of the association between treatments with interferon-alpha (IFN-alpha) for HCV infection and AT.

Material And Methods: A search in Medline, PubMed, and EMBASE was conducted with a systematic review of clinical studies in English and other languages.