In contrast, IL-8 and to some extent IL-6, which have been shown to be associated with disease severity of COVID-19 [34] and increased in other SARS-CoV-2 infection models [3, 4], showed a reduction as a response to SARS-CoV-2 infection, which may be due to the absence of immune cells in our model. The gene discussed is CXCL8; the disease is COVID-19.