IRF4 and diabetes mellitus: We found that the levels of mRNA expression of IRF4 were slightly but not significantly higher (P > .05) in splenocytes of 3-week old NOD (7.7 ± 0.8) mice as compared to splenocytes of diabetes-resistant BALB/c (1.04 ± 0.1), NOR (2.6 ± 0.6), C57BL/6 (5.8 ± 0.9), or CD1 (3.7 ± 0.8) mice (Figure 1(a)).