Compared with the results of other transcriptomic studies of upper respiratory tract infections, the trends of changes in multiple pathways in the present study are consistent (Supplementary Table S2) (Herberg et al., 2013; Rosa et al., 2021; Nicoletti et al., 2022), e.g., upregulation of interferon and NF-κB pathways, and downregulation of the TGF-β pathway, which suggests that the present results are reliable. This evidence concerns the gene NFKB1 and Recurrent upper respiratory tract infections.