Non HCV-related mixed cryoglobulinemia

Mixed cryoglobulinemia

“…The prevalence of MC presents great geographic heterogeneity; the disease is more common in Southern Europe than in Northern Europe or Northern America [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13]. It is considered to be a rare disorder, however, yet there are no adequate epidemiological studies regarding its overall prevalence.…”

“…For the same reasons, the clinical pattern of the MC syndrome may vary largely among patients series referred to different tertiary care facilities [3,6,[8][9][10][11][12][13][14] (Fig. 3).…”

“…Some endocrinological disorders are significantly more frequent in MC patients compared to the general population [3,12,13,24,25,[46][47][48][49][50]. The most common thyroid disorders are autoimmune thyroiditis, subclinical hypothyroidism, and thyroid cancer; while hyperthy-roidism is less frequent, generally as reversible complication of interferon treatment [51][52][53][54].…”

“…This is an in vitro phenomenon ( Fig. 1), the actual mechanism(s) of cryoprecipitation remains obscure, it could be secondary to intrinsic characteristics of both mono-and polyclonal immunoglobulin (Ig) components, it can be caused as well by the interaction among single components of the cryoprecipitate [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14].…”

“…Type I cryoglobulinemia is almost invariably associated with well-known hematological disorders and is frequently asymptomatic per se; similarly, circulating mixed cryoglobulins are commonly detected in a great number of infectious or systemic disorders [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14]. On the contrary, 'essential' MC represents a distinct disorder [3][4][5][6], which can be classified among systemic vasculitides [3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10].…”