Han Ah Lee¹, Yeon Seok Seo¹, and Seung Up Kim^2,3,*

¹Department of Internal Medicine, Institute of Gastroenterology, Korea University College of Medicine, Seoul Korea;
²Department of Internal Medicine, Institute of Gastroenterology, Yonsei University College of Medicine, Seoul Korea;
³Yonsei Liver Center, Severance Hospital, Seoul, Korea

^*Corresponding author

To the editor

We read with great interest the article entitled “Tenofovir is associated with lower risk of hepatocellular carcinoma than entecavir in patients with chronic HBV Infection in China” (1). In this study by Yip et al. (1), the authors concluded that tenofovir disoproxil fumarate (TDF) was associated with a significantly lower risk of hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) development than entecavir (ETV) in treatment-naïve Chinese patients with chronic hepatitis B (CHB). The main findings of this study seem to be consistent with a previous study by Choi et al. (2), but are completely inconsistent with the results of several recent studies, including ours, showing no long-term differences, including the risk of developing HCC, between treatment-naïve patients with CHB treated with ETV vs. TDF (3-5). Several issues should be kept in mind when interpreting the results of the study (1).