Simultaneously, according to a study of hepatitis C virus patients, IFN-α therapy causes significant somatic pain and promotes major depressive disorder as early as the second week of treatment (Lin et al., 2020), although early reports have demonstrated that IFN-α and IFN-β, two major family members of type 1 interferons, exert an antinociceptive action (Menzies et al., 1992). Here, IFNA1 is linked to major depressive disorder.