Furthermore, 10 of the 15 genes have been previously reported to be associated with the disease states represented by their OAMs, except that decr1, mgmt, diablo and ebp have not been reported to be associated with CHB and hdac2 has not been reported to be correlated with cirrhosis and HCC (Additional file 1: Table S6). This evidence concerns the gene HDAC2 and Cirrhosis.