Similar to the findings presented in this study, in Alzheimer’s disease, IL-1 overexpression localized to areas of activated microglia associated with β-amyloid plaques (Griffin and Mrak, 2002) and also of relevance is the observation that IL-1β accelerates apoptosis of retinal capillary cells (Kowluru and Odenbach, 2004). The gene discussed is IL1B; the disease is Alzheimer disease.