Selected characteristics of the

1,300 HBV-positive HCC patients, 1,344 persistent HBV carriers, and 1,344 subjects with HBV natural clearance are described in Table 1. As expected, there were similar distributions of age and sex between the three groups (P = 0.839 and 0.716, respectively). However, there were more drinkers among HCC patients than among HBV carriers and the natural clearance group (P < 0.001 for both comparisons). The genotype distributions of these four SNPs in HCC patients, HBV carriers, and subjects with HBV natural clearance are described in Table 2. The observed genotype frequencies for these four SNPs in both HBV carriers and subjects with HBV natural clearance were all in Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium (HBV carriers: P = 0.964 for rs3077, P = 0.622 Ruxolitinib for rs9277535, P = 0.286 for rs2856718, and P = 0.538 for RG7204 rs7453920; subjects with HBV natural clearance: P

= 0.525 for rs3077, P = 0.576 for rs9277535, P = 0.683 for rs2856718, and P = 0.961 for rs7453920). Logistic regression analyses showed that all these four SNPs were significantly associated with HBV clearance in dominant genetic models (i.e., heterozygote/mutational homozygote versus wild homozygote) (rs3077: adjusted OR = 0.81, 95% CI = 0.70-0.95; rs9277535: adjusted OR = 0.60, 95% CI = 0.51-0.70; rs2856718: adjusted OR = 0.75, 95% CI = 0.64-0.89; rs7453920: adjusted OR = 0.60, 95% CI = 0.49-0.73). Moreover, rs3077 and rs2856718 variant genotypes significantly decreased host HCC risk, when compared with persistent HBV carriers in dominant genetic models (rs3077: adjusted OR = 0.78, 95% CI = 0.67-0.92; rs2856718: adjusted OR = 0.70, 95% CI = 0.59-0.83) (Table 2). We then used conditional logistic regression analysis to test the independence of these SNPs. The effect

medchemexpress of rs3077 on HBV clearance was weakened (P = 0.126) after conditioned on the other three SNPs, and therefore we did not include it in further combined analyses (Supporting Table 2). However, the effects of rs3077 and rs2856718 on HCC development remained in existence after being conditioned on the other three SNPs (P = 2.64 × 10−3 for rs3077 and P = 1.76 × 10−4 for rs2856718) (Supporting Table 2). Then, we evaluated combined effects by adding up the number of variant alleles of the independent SNPs on HBV clearance (HLA-DP rs9277535, HLA-DQ rs2856718, and rs7453920) and HCC development (HLA-DP rs3077 and HLA-DQ rs2856718). The results showed that the ORs for risk of HBV clearance and HCC development decreased, with the number of variant alleles having increased (Table 3; Supporting Fig. 1). Subjects carrying four to six variant alleles of rs9277535, rs7453920, and rs2856718 had significantly associated with HBV clearance (OR = 0.24, 95% CI = 0.17-0.34), compared with subjects with wild-type (WT) homozygotes of the three SNPs.