Mitochondrial dysfunction in hepatitis C virus infection

The mechanisms of liver injury in chronic hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection are poorly understood though HCV induces a state of hepatic oxidative stress that is more pronounced than that present in many other inflammatory diseases. This mini-review will focus on recent findings revealing an unexpected role of mitochondria in providing a central role in the innate immunity and in addition will illustrate the application of stably transfected human-derived cell lines, inducibly expressing the entire HCV open reading frame for in vitro studies on mitochondria. Results obtained by a comparative analysis of the respiratory chain complexes activities along with mitochondrial morpho-functional confocal microscopy imaging show a detrimental effect of HCV proteins on the cell oxidative metabolism with specific inhibition of complex I activity, decrease of mt Delta psi, increased production of reactive oxygen species. A possible de-regulation of calcium recycling between the endoplasmic reticulum and the mitochondrial network is discussed to provide new insights in the pathogenesis of hepatitis C. (c) 2006 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.