Hu et al. indicated that IL-17 promotes the proliferation of liver cancer cells (HBV+) by activating the IL-6/STAT3 signaling pathway (Hu et al., 2017), and Tian et al. found that IL-17 expression and promoter methylation were closely related to the progression of chronic HBV infection, particularly in patients with HCC (Tian et al., 2019). This evidence concerns the gene IL6 and liver cancer.