“…In this regard, HCV infection has been shown to be associated with lymphoproliferative disorders, especially non-Hodgkin lymphomas (Gruber et al, 1993;Ferri et al, 1994;Pozzato et al, 1994;Mussini et al, 1995) and several autoimmune disorders have been related to HCV. The bestdocumented example is essential mixed cryoglobulinaemia Ferri et al, 1991;Casato et al, 1991;Agnello et al, 1992;Cacoub et al, 1993Cacoub et al, , 1994Pakula et al, 1993;Abel et al, 1993), but a high prevalence of anti-HCV has also been found in a variety of systemic and organ-specific autoimmune diseases, including systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE; Marchesoni et al, 1995), Sjogren's syndrome (SS; Haddad et al, 1992;Almazio et al, 1992;Mariette et al, 1993), rheumatoid arthritis (RA; Siegel et al, 1993;Ueno et al, 1994), vasculitis (Cacoub et al, 1992;Carson et al, 1993;Weidensaul et al, 1995;Munke et al, 1995), thyroid diseases (Tran et al, 1993), membranoproliferative glomerulonephritis ( Johnson et al, 1993), haemolytic anaemia and autoimmune thrombocytopenia (Yabu et al, 1994). Also, immunological disturbances that develop in haemophiliacs treated with factor VIII infusions may well be attributed, in large part, to HCV infection (Al-Saeed et al, 1994).…”