IL1B and inflammatory response: In our histopathological analysis of L2-IL-1β mice housed at MIT under different conditions (SPF and GF), we observed that these mice developed significant (P ≤ 0.0001) esophageal inflammation and cumulative histopathology index scores (HI) even at 3 months of age that was consistently maintained up to 15 months of age (Fig. 1E,F) compared to their WT control littermates (Fig. 2A,B).