IL18 and hepatocellular carcinoma: TNFα-238G>A polymorphism has been reported to alter the risk of several types of cancers, such as HCC, breast cancer, lung cancer, non-Hodgkin lymphomas, and prostate cancer (Ma et al., 2014).Interleukin-18 (IL-18) belongs to the IL-1 cytokine superfamily and it is a novel proinflammatory cytokine.