Furthermore, some functional studies showed that, as the expression of miR-218 increased, cell migration was inhibited and the expression of high mobility group box-1 (HMGB1) was also suppressed when miR-218 targeted its 3′-untranslated region (UTR) in NSCLC.25 Some studies have examined the associations of rs11134527 located at putative promoter region of miR-218 with the risk of different human cancers, such as esophageal squamous cell carcinoma26 and cervical cancer.27 However, this SNP was excluded in our study because of a low call rate (51.2%) in the HapMap database. Here, HMGB1 is linked to cervical cancer.