IL6 and atrial fibrillation: Cyclic stretching of IVD (mostly AF) cells at a high strain from 8 to 20% was shown to induce the downregulation of anabolic markers (ACAN, COL2) [13] and the upregulation of catabolic (MMP1, MMP3, MMP9, MMP13, ADAMTS4, ADAMTS5) [13,14] and (pro-)inflammatory (COX2, PGE2, IL1β, IL6, IL8, IL15, TLR2, TLR4, NGF, TNFα, MCP1, MCP3, MIG) [13,14,15,16,17] mediators.