Therefore, blockade of the IL-1/IL-1R axis may be a promising adjunct anti-tumour therapy that would particularly affect HPV-negative OPSCC, although there may be inherent side effects in the blocking of this key inflammatory pathway, such as potential changes to inflammatory signalling pathways leading to dysregulated host inflammatory responses to infection or alterations to the activation of important immune cells types such as natural killer and cytotoxic T cells that are crucial in host anti-cancer responses [63, 64]. This evidence concerns the gene IL1A and infection.