Along with VEGF-A, proinflammatory cytokines were also shown to alter BBB integrity in different brain disorders, including TBE (Almutairi et al., 2016; Mustafa et al., 2019) and were also strongly upregulated and concentrated in CSF of TBE patients at the onset of neurological symptoms (Grygorczuk et al., 2006; Zajkowska et al., 2011; Grygorczuk et al., 2017; Grygorczuk et al., 2018; Koper et al., 2018; Bogovic et al., 2019). The gene discussed is VEGFA; the disease is tick-borne encephalitis.