NFATC3 and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: To further determine whether the NFATc3 expression is elevated and activated in pulmonary macrophages of IPF patients, we compared NFATc3 expression level between 45 healthy control subjects and 15 subjects with sporadic IPF from the GEO profiles (GSE 49072), the result show significantly increased mRNA level of NFATc3 in pulmonary macrophages of sporadic IPF patients (Fig. 2A).