Innate immunity and hepatocarcinoma: Can toll-like receptors open the door to oncogenesis?

Figure 1 Methods’ flowchart. A total amount of 277 articles were obtained, on PubMed, through the query [(hepatocarcinoma) OR (hepatocarcinogenesis) OR (hepatic cancer) OR (hepatocellular carcinoma) OR (liver cancer)] AND [(toll like receptors) OR (toll like receptor)]. After discarding the duplicates and adding 28 articles obtained through cross-referencing, 305 articles were available to be screened. The following inclusion criteria were used: (1) studies that were published until the end March 2015; (2) the article should be written in English; and (3) studies relevant to the theme (presenting original data). As exclusion criteria we defined: (1) studies considered by the authors as unrelated to the theme; and (2) non-original studies. These criteria were applied by reading the title and abstract resulting in 227 articles excluded. After this step, the remaining 78 studies were selected for full-text reading. On a second level of eligibility, 18 more studies were excluded and 60 studies were selected, analysed and included in this revision.