**4. Conclusions**

To date, newly developed antiviral drugs, such as nucleotide analogs and interferon, have been introduced in the management of individuals with chronic HBV or HCV infection. Unfortunately, the clinical evidence suggests that their therapeutic efficacy is still less than satisfactory. Many patients have to discontinue the antiviral therapy owing to side effects or lower efficacy of the treatment, implying that they face the risk of cancer development. Even when not infected with hepatitis viruses, some obese individuals have a high risk of HCC development induced by NASH. Since there are no useful curative treatments for HCC, the need to prevent the early step of hepatocarcinogenesis is inevitable. Many studies have shown that the DNA damage repair system might be considerably involved in HCC development, irrespective of the different etiologies. Novel treatments for preventing DNA damage and/or potentiating the cellular capacity of DNA damage repair are under investigation and the results are awaited.
