We confirmed a significant exclusivity between HBV infection and mutations in CTNNB1, TP53 and ARID1A that was found in a larger liver cancer cohort analyzed by high-throughput sequencing (FDR-corrected P = 5.35 × 10−6, 0.0023 and 0.0023, respectively; DISCOVER22)23. This evidence concerns the gene ARID1A and liver cancer.