IL6 and hepatocellular carcinoma: This result differed from the study by Qadri et al. The miR‐125b has been reported to be an inhibitor for HCC (Kim et al., 2013), while IL6/STAT3 pathway could upregulate the expression of miR‐125b in HCV infected cells (Dai et al., 2018), which means that STAT3 pathway could prevent HCV infected cells from HCC.