We thank John, Metwally, and their colleagues for indicating their valuable findings and comments1 on our paper “Genome-Wide Association Study Identifies TLL1 Variant Associated With Development of Hepatocellular Carcinoma After Eradication of Hepatitis C Virus Infection.”2 Although our data indicated that TLL1/Tll1 messenger RNA levels increased according to hepatic fibrosis progression in human and murine models, we could not determine the correlation between the TLL1 rs17047200 genotype and hepatic fibrosis stage under persistent hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection by a cross-sectional study.