Prevalence of hepatitis C virus infection in patients with cardiomyopathy.

Chronic hepatitis C can be associated with extrahepatic manifestations; thus, we explored the association of this viral infection with dilated cardiomyopathy in a group of sixty-three patients with a cardiac ejection fraction of less than 40% determined by an echocardiogram in a prospective study. Two of the forty-one patients with non-ischemic cardiomyopathy (4.8%) had serum antibodies to the hepatitis C virus and one of those had hepatitis C virus RNA (2.

Human hepatic met-enkephalin and delta opioid receptor-1 immunoreactivities in viral and autoimmune hepatitis.

Endogenous opioids participate in growth regulation. Liver regeneration relates to growth. Thus, we explored the expression of methionine enkephalin and of the delta opioid receptor 1 immunoreactivities with a polyclonal rabbit antibody in deparaffinized liver of patients with chronic liver disease.

Liver derived endogenous opioids may interfere with the therapeutic effect of interferon in chronic hepatitis C.

A substantial number of patients with chronic hepatitis C does not respond to treatment with interferon and ribavirin, the approved drugs to treat this viral infection. In vitro studies have shown that morphine, which exerts its effects by binding to opioid receptors, enhances the expression of hepatitis C RNA in hepatitis C-replicon containing liver cells, and that it interferes with the antiviral effect of interferon on the hepatitis C virus. Met-enkephalin, one of the endogenous opioid peptides, can bind to the same receptors to which morphine binds, triggering similar receptor-mediated effects.