The results revealed that high HRNR expression in HCC positively correlated with vascular invasion (P = 0.002), poor tumor differentiation (P = 0.042) and advanced TNM stage (P <  0.001); however, the high expression of HRNR in HCCs had no significant correlation with age, gender, HCC family history, hepatitis B, liver function Child-Pugh stage, cirrhosis, tumor size, tumor number, encapsulation and alpha-fetoprotein (AFP) (all P > 0.05) (Table 1). Here, HRNR is linked to hepatitis B virus infection.