Gavino and others found that blockade of Th2 and Th17 pathways by STAT3 inhibitors in a mouse model of asthma was effective in reducing lung inflammation compared with that employing blockade of one pathway alone (Gavino et al., 2016), which conformed to the correlation between STAT3 expression and IL-13 and IL-17A expressions in our study. The gene discussed is IL13; the disease is asthma.