Hepatitis C and autoimmunity: a therapeutic challenge.

Hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection causes not only acute and chronic liver disease, but also extrahepatic symptoms. To our knowledge, this is the first case report of a patient who developed simultaneously subacute cutaneous lupus erythematosus and a small CD20+ B-cell clone because of chronic HCV infection and relapse after standard of care therapy (pegylated interferon plus ribavirin). Treatment with rituximab, a chimeric anti-CD20 monoclonal antibody, was successful.