Although the genes differentially associated with Th17 cells between ERs and DRs did not achieve a stringent threshold of FDR, the top three genes, S100B, MILR1 and CHI3L1 (p-value < 0.001, FDR = 0.79, Additional file1: Figure S3), have previously been reported to be involved in allergy or asthma[27-29]. Here, CHI3L1 is linked to allergic disease.