Based on these results, we divided 102 HCC patients into 4 groups: high-expression of HIF-1α (n = 64), low-expression of HIF-1α (n = 38), high-expression of CXCL8 (n = 59) and low-expression of CXCL8 (n = 43). Here, CXCL8 is linked to hepatocellular carcinoma.