Abstract
Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is etiologically linked with hepatitis B virus (HBV) and is the leading cause of death amongst 80% of HBV patients. Among HBV affected patients, genetic factors are also involved in modifying the risk factors of HCC. However, the genetic factors that regulate progression to HCC still remain to be determined. In this review, we discuss several single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) which were reportedly associated with increased or reduced risk of HCC occurrence in patients with chronic HBV infection such as cyclooxygenase (COX)-2 expression specifically at COX-2 - 1195G/A in Chinese, Turkish and Egyptian populations, tumor necrosis factor alpha and the three most commonly studied SNPs: PAT-/+, Lys939Gln (A33512C, rs2228001) and Ala499Val (C21151T, rs2228000). In genome-wide association studies, strong associations have also been found at loci 1p36.22, 11q22.3, 6p21 (rs1419881, rs3997872, rs7453920 and rs7768538), 8p12 (rs2275959 and rs37821974) and 22q11.21. The genes implicated in these studies include HLA-DQB2, HLA-DQA1, TCF19, HLA-C, UBE2L3, LTL, FDX1, MICA, UBE4B and PG. The SNPs found to be associated with the above-mentioned genes still require validation in association studies in order to be considered good prognostic candidates for HCC. Screening of these polymorphisms is very beneficial in clinical experiments to stratify the higher or lower risk for HCC and may help in designing effective and efficient HCC surveillance programs for chronic HBV-infected patients if further genetic vulnerabilities are detected.