Interestingly, despite the adverse effects of MUC5B overexpression, IPF patients harboring the rs35705950 polymorphism exhibit more prolonged survival, slower disease progression, reduced lung bacterial burden, less severe pathological changes, and a slower decline in forced vital capacity compared to non-carriers [2,10,14,16,17,18,19]. Here, MUC5B is linked to idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis.