Lee YC, et al. - Given that infection in liver cirrhosis is significantly associated with morbidity and mortality, researchers sought for the incidence and mortality related to these conditions in patients infected with hepatitis C virus (HCV) and investigated whether antiviral therapy could change their infection risk. For this community-based cohort study, they classified a total of 115,336 adults (mean age 52.2 years; 35.6% men) without cirrhosis participating in the New Taipei City Health Screening in 2005–2008 as having noncirrhotic HCV (NC-HCV) (n = 2,839), noncirrhotic hepatitis B virus (NC-HBV) (n = 8,316), or no HBV or HCV infection (n = 104,181). Observations revealed a 22% increased risk for hospitalization for overall infection episodes among patients without cirrhosis and with HCV infections (NC-HCV), but not among patients without cirrhosis and with HBV infections (NC-HBV). With respect to individual sites of infection, they observed increased risks for septicemia and lower respiratory tract, reproductive, and urinary tract infections among patients with NC-HCV. A 20% reduced risk for hospitalization for all infections was observed in correlation with the reception of ribavirin plus peg-interferon therapy among patients with HCV infection. These findings emphasize making early diagnosis and treatment when there is clinical suspicion of infection syndrome in HCV patients.