You have improved slightly compared to Count Matches in a File, but I guess you could do better. Maybe re-reading that thread again (it is not long) helps a bit along the way.

     @cytokine=split(/\t/,$_);
          
     while (/\d+/ and exists $ING{$cytokine}){
# huh? ---------------------------^^^^^^^^^
            $count++;}
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Where does $cytokine get set? And why are you incrementing $count, never using it later? @cytokine and $cytokine are two unrelated variables; the former is an array, while the latter is a scalar. See perldata.