Further experiments conducted for four cytokines (i.e. CCL2, CCL13, CXCL12, IL8) selected from among the top RNA-Seq results found that vitamin D inhibited TNFα-induced IL8 protein secretion levels to a comparable degree in fatal asthma- and non-asthma-derived ASM even though IL8 had significantly higher baseline levels in fatal asthma-derived ASM. Here, CXCL12 is linked to asthma.