VCAM1 and HIV infectious disease: HIV/HCV coinfected patients presented significantly higher levels of systemic inflammation and endothelial activation markers, including IL-18, IP-10, VCAM-1 and ICAM-1, in agreement with previous studies in HIV/HCV coinfected [12,14,16,22,23,24,25] and in HCV monoinfected [15,26,27] patients, suggesting a direct role for HCV in systemic inflammation and endothelial activation in the setting of HIV infection.