There was an overlap of 26 pro-inflammatory cytokines out of 1729 upregulated differentially expressed genes (DEGs) in mouse primary astrocytes treated with human anti-AQP4 autoantibodies purified from NMO patients’ plasma (hsAQP4-IgG) (Supplementary Fig. 1a), the proper control conditions of human control IgG (hsCtrl-IgG, pooled from healthy subject’s plasma), recognized a group of C-C and C-X-C motif chemokine genes, including CCL2, 7, 3, 9, 4, 6 and CXCL 1, 9, 10, 5, 11, 3, 16, 12, 13, together with TNF-α, IL-6, IL-1α, IL-1β (Supplementary Fig. 1b). Here, IL6 is linked to neuromyelitis optica.