Tan Y, Zhang X, Zhang W, et al. - Researchers investigated the potential link between hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) risk and metabolic syndrome (MS) among prospectively enrolled 6,564 people with hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection from an initial cohort of 105,397 civil servants in mainland China. They used Cox proportional hazards models to assess multivariate-adjusted HR and 95% confidence interval. They used Kaplan–Meier curves to plot cumulative incidences. A 45,668.0 person-year follow-up (76.0 ± 30.8 months) was performed in 6,564 individuals who were seropositive for hepatitis B surface antigen. After follow-up, they detected 89 incident HCC cases. Independent link of MS, as a whole, with a 2-fold increased HCC risk was revealed after adjusting for age (in 1-year increments), gender, cigarette smoking, alcohol intake, liver cirrhosis, and elevated aspartate aminotransferase levels (≥ 40 U/L). In this study, the independent links of MS as a whole, central obesity, and type 2 diabetes, with increased HCC risk were shown in individuals with HBV infection in mainland China.