Altered splicing of inflammatory and immune genes (e.g., IRAK4, MAP3K7, and CASP8) due to spliceosome mutations may contribute to MDS pathogenesis by leading to inflammation, changes in immune cell function, and increased risk of infection (Starczynowski and Karsan 2010b, 2010a; Pagano and Caira 2012; Darman et al. 2015; Ilagan et al. 2015; Kim et al. 2015; Zhang et al. 2015; Alsafadi et al. 2016; Grignano et al. 2018; Pollyea et al. 2019; Smith et al. 2019). The gene discussed is IRAK4; the disease is infection.