All showed an up-regulation of APE1/Ref-1 in HCC with HCC/DLC ratio >1 (Fig 1C), while only 57.8% of subjects presented an up-regulation in cirrhosis as compared to NL (Fig 1C) indicating that transcriptional up regulation of APEX1 gene is always present in HCC and in more than half of cirrhotic samples. Here, APEX1 is linked to Cirrhosis.