IL17A and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: Other studies utilizing similar models to simulate bacterium-induced acute exacerbation of IPF by administering bleomycin to mice and then infecting them with a strain of NTHi (Chen et al., 2022) have revealed that NTHi infection can cause acute exacerbation of IPF and that the IL-17 gene is key for the progression of IPF acute exacerbation and could serve as a novel therapeutic target for treating the disease.