HMGB1 and viral infectious disease: The nuclear protein high mobility group box 1 (HMGB1), which is released by neurons and macrophages/monocytes in response to exogenous and endogenous inflammatory stimuli and during unconstrained cell death, is thought to play a critical role as a danger signal in virus infection-induced inflammatory responses in the CNS (Wang et al., 2006; Vezzani et al., 2016; Walker et al., 2022).