Letter to the Editor: Use of New Defined Metabolic Risk Factors in Patients with Chronic Hepatitis B – The Authors’ reply

We thank Dr. Liu et al for their interest and the comments about our article.(1) In our current study, we validated an association of the burden of metabolic risk factors with risks of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) using a large nationwide population-based cohort of patients with chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection. The criteria for metabolic risk factors (obesity, high blood pressure, hypercholesterolemia, and diabetes) were adopted and modified from a previous Taiwanese study including 1,690 men with chronic HBV infection.