Some of the identified viral genes are also involved in other viral diseases, such as IKZF3 which promotes proliferation of HIV-1-infected cells (Wei et al., 2023), IRF8 which is involved in the induction of downstream antiviral genes in monocytes by DNA viruses (such as HSV-1) but not RNA viruses (Luo et al., 2022), and variants in TNFSF4 which are associated with the risk of HCV infection (Fu et al., 2021). The gene discussed is IRF8; the disease is viral load.