Among the lncRNAs previously reported in HCC, we found that 6 (ANRIL, HEIH, HOTTIP, PCNA-AS1, UFC1 and ZEB-AS1) were elevated in all three hepatitis viruses-related tumor tissues (Additional file 7: Table S7, Additional file 8: Figure S1a, b, f–i), although some of them did not reach statistical significance, possibly due to the small number of samples analyzed. This evidence concerns the gene PCNA and hepatocellular carcinoma.