Other important members of the type I IFN family (IFNε, IFNκ) were already characterized during viral infections like HSV-1/2, Zika virus or human papillomavirus (HPV) in the vaginal tract (Reiser et al., 2011; Fung et al., 2013; Habiger et al., 2016; Woodby et al., 2018; Mungin et al., 2022) or in HSV-1-infected keratinocytes (Li et al., 2020; Kalke et al., 2022). Here, IFNE is linked to viral infectious disease.