Considering that corticosteroid treatment may decrease plasma IL-6 (53) and YKL-40 (49) levels and that only 2 out of 82 patients (Supplementary File 3) in our cohort of newly diagnosed GBM did not receive corticosteroid treatment at blood-sampling, this may also at least partly explain the general lack of increase in measured plasma biomarkers. The gene discussed is IL6; the disease is glioblastoma.