Hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection is an important health problem worldwide and HBV-infected patients can develop liver failure, liver cirrhosis, and hepatocellular carcinoma, resulting in an annual death toll of more than 1 million patients. 1,2 In China, HBV is the major cause of liver cirrhosis, and approximately 3% of HBV-infected patients with compensated cirrhosis develop decompensated cirrhosis (DeCi) each year, with a 5-year survival rate of only 15%. [3][4][5] Liver transplantation is an only reliable life-prolonging intervention for patients suffering from this condition. However, a shortage of donor livers and serious post-transplantation complications have limited its application. Therefore, identification of specific biomarkers that allow early assessment of prognosis of HBV-DeCi patients has gained importance in clinical practice.It is well known that the systemic inflammatory status plays an important role in the pathogenesis of HBV infection. Several studies have demonstrated that inflammation is relatively common in patients with advanced cirrhosis and associated with poor outcomes. 6,7 Monocyte-to-HDL-cholesterol (HDL-C) ratio (MHR) was a newly proposed inflammatory biomarker. 8 Recently, MHR was reported to be closely associated with coronary heart disease, [9][10][11] atrial fibrillation, 12,13 hypertension, 14 chronic kidney disease, 15 and cerebrovascular accidents. 16 However, no studies have investigated