Similarly, we and others have reported that a range of stressful conditions (particularly psychosocial stressors stemming from changes in housing conditions), cytokines (including IL-1b, TNF-α and IFN-α) and immune agents that mimic bacterial or viral infections (LPS and poly I:C, respectively) increase hypothalamic cytokine expression and promote microglial-dependent neuroinflammatory activity [39,50-53]. Here, IL1B is linked to viral infectious disease.