Ingenuity Pathway Analysis of DEGs (Additional file 4: Sheet 3) identified significant regulation of pathways previously implicated in developmental myelination failure, such as Wnt signalling [10, 27, 39] (3/4 infants; ‘Wnt/β-catenin signalling’, ‘Role of Wnt/GSKβ signalling in the pathogenesis of influenza’, and ‘Wnt/Ca2 + pathway’), the inflammasome pathway [13] (3/4 infants; ‘IL1 signalling’, and ‘Inflammasome pathway’), and ‘IGF-1 signalling’ [3] (2/4 infants). Here, IL1B is linked to influenza.