IFNG and autoimmune thyroid disease: In addition, Poma et al. recently demonstrated that thyrocytes with direct evidence of SARS-CoV-2 genome and antigens taken from patients who died of COVID-19 carry transcriptional variations of the immunity genes, resulting in an important activation of IFN type 1 (IFN alpha) and type 2 (IFN gamma) pathways, which in turn are able to induce or reactivate thyroid autoimmunity [63].