Interestingly, higher intrathecal expression of IFN-β was observed in patients with milder clinical presentation (Grygorczuk et al., 2015), yet our results showed a significantly higher CSF level of IFN-β in VBT patients, known to develop a more severe disease, compared to unvaccinated TBE patients. This evidence concerns the gene IFNB1 and tick-borne encephalitis.