Smoking favours hepatocellular carcinoma

Chronic hepatitis B or C virus (HBV or HCV) remained the strongest risk factor for hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC), but results of a nested case-control study in Europe showed that 47.6% of HCC was associated with smoking (1). The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) showed enough evidence to classify liver cancer as a tobacco related malignancy in 2004 (2). The available knowledge on the relationship between tobacco smoking and a variety of cancers is based primarily on epidemiological evidences.