The same study showed that levels of inflammasome-activated IL-1β were reduced in the lung airways of the animals infected with viruses lacking E protein activity, indicating that not only the 3a protein (Siu et al., 2019), but also E protein ion channel activity is required for inflammasome activation, possibly serving as second trigger in a similar way as was suggested for p7 in hepatitis C (Shrivastava et al., 2013; Farag et al., 2017, 2020; Negash et al., 2019). This evidence concerns the gene IL1B and hepatitis C virus infection.