These stimuli, such as biomechanical stretching, hypoxemia, infection, cytokines and reactive oxygen species, have a positive effect on NFAT5 expression and the activation of immune cells, which leads to the upregulation of NFAT5 target genes such as inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS), tumour necrosis factor (TNF), IL-6 and CCL2 [28,29,30]. Here, NOS2 is linked to infection.