Autoimmune hemolytic anemia in chronic hepatitis C virus infection: an unusual extrahepatic autoimmune manifestation.

We report a case of Coombs positive autoimmune hemolytic anemia occurring in a patient with chronic hepatitis C, never treated with interferon-alpha. Prednisone treatment induced the complete remission of both clinical and hematological findings after 2 months. The indirect Coombs test turned negative, while the direct Coombs test remained weakly positive. Autoimmune hemolytic anemia during chronic hepatitis C has been reported to develop only after or simultaneously with interferon-alpha therapy. After discarding other possible causes such as drugs, infectious, neoplastic, lymphoproliferative diseases, and essential mixed cryoglobulinemia, we made the hypothesis of a correlation between autoimmune hemolytic anemia and hepatitis C virus infection.