Cryoglobulinemic vasculitis (CV) is the most frequent extrahepatic manifestation during HCV-chronic infection. An effective Direct Acting Antiviral-treatment leads to CV clinical response in the majority of CV-patients although symptoms may persist/recur despite a sustained virological response. At present, no standardized clinical predictive factors for disease maintenance/recurrence were proposed, as emerged from a complete literature review we performed and reported. Here we provided a detailed descriptive analysis of a wide population of CV patients treated with DAA-based regimes and followed-up after therapy completion for longer than 72 weeks, in order to identify clinical or laboratory predictors of disease outcome and to optimize the patient management. Together with some baseline symptoms (neuropathy, weakness and sicca syndrome), two newly created scores, CV- and Global Severity Index, emerged as reliable and standardized tools to predict CV clinical response before initiating an antiviral therapy. In addition to predictive parameters previously proposed in the world literature, these novel Indexes could fill an unmet gap in the clinical management of the complex HCV-related CV.
Keywords: Cryoglobulinemic vasculitis; Hepatitis C virus; Mixed cryoglobulinemia; Outcome; Predictor; Severity index.
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