We also investigated whether common comorbidities had an impact on the plasma concentration of IL-26 among all patients with COVID-19 and found that patients with a prior diagnosis of obstructive lung disease (asthma: n=22; COPD: n=4; asthma and COPD: n=1) displayed a higher plasma concentration of IL-26 (Figure 4A) and a clearly higher (χ2 test: p = 0.0370) number of samples with a concentration of IL-26 above the lower limit of detection (Figure 4B). Here, IL26 is linked to asthma.