In addition, treatment of pericytes with cytokines that are typically overexpressed during HIV infection (including tumour necrosis factor alpha, TNF-α, and IL-1β) reduces their expression of PDGF-Rβ, rendering them less responsive to migratory stimuli, and increases proinflammatory gene expression [31, 32, 36, 38]. Here, PDGFRB is linked to HIV infectious disease.