Maternal virus infection has been proposed as a risk factor for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder (Schmitt et al., 2014, Parboosing et al., 2013), and inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin (IL)-1, IL-6 (Drzyzga et al., 2006) and transforming growth factor (TGF)-α (Kim et al., 2009), which drive inflammation and act as modulators of immune response, are increased in plasma in some schizophrenia patients (Watanabe et al., 2010). The gene discussed is IL6; the disease is schizophrenia.