Three genes of the Cb-NHL signature were strongly up-regulated (fold change between 100 and 1000) in patients with C. burnetii and lymphoma and significantly increased when compared to C. burnetii persistent infection and to NHL-control: MIR17HG (p = 0.0026), SP100 (p = 0.026) and REL (p = 0.0024) (Fig 3C). Here, REL is linked to non-Hodgkin lymphoma.