Author information
1Wake Forest School of Medicine, Winston-Salem, NC, USA. Electronic address: Chloetom248@gmail.com.
2Division of Infectious Diseases, Department of Internal Medicine, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA, Los Angeles, CA, USA.
3Section on Hospital Medicine, Department of Internal Medicine, Novant Health, Winston-Salem, NC, USA.
4Department of Pharmacy, Wake Forest Baptist Health, Winston-Salem, NC, USA.
5Section on Infectious Diseases, Department of Internal Medicine, Wake Forest Baptist Health, Winston-Salem, NC, USA.
Abstract
Injection drug use (IDU) is a risk factor for infective endocarditis (IE) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection. This retrospective cohort study assessed HCV's impact on outcomes of adult people who inject drugs (PWID). Those admitted due to IE using modified Duke criteria from January 2012 through May 2018 were identified. The cohort was divided into HCV seropositive and seronegative groups. The seropositive group was further stratified according to HCV viremia. Complications and mortality during the IE hospitalization, at 10 weeks, and 1 year were compared across groups. Clinical factors were similar between the cohorts, except patients without viremia (29, 81%) required more ICU admissions than with viremia (30, 60%) (P < 0.05). There was no difference in mortality at all time periods between the groups. Although several factors affect mortality in PWID with IE, neither HCV antibody positivity nor viremia appear to increase the risk for complications or death.