It has been shown that virus-infected cells could release ATP that activates purinergic receptors on adjacent cells (Swartz et al., 2014; Manzoor et al., 2016) and affect viral infections including HIV, hepatitis virus, influenza, and dengue viruses (Taylor and Han, 2010; Corrêa et al., 2016; Leyva-Grado et al., 2017). Here, P2RX7 is linked to viral infectious disease.