According to the state of art in the knowledge of the biology of CpG and PyNTTTTGT ODNs, it seems reasonable to speculate that synthetic CpG ODNs, which induce IFNα, should mimic some important early step during viral infection, which, as mentioned above, may well be stimulation of the internal TLR9 receptor by naked DNA viral genomes. The gene discussed is IFNA17; the disease is viral infectious disease.