TNF and tuberculosis: Figure 2.A shows that eight genes in the TNF and TNFR superfamilies were markedly up-regulated in the TB group. Therefore, we validated the expression levels of these genes in purified peripheral CD4+ T cells of each group (HD, n = 10; LTBL, n = 12; LTBH, n = 7; TB, n = 10), which samples were not the same for genome array assay. Except for the expression levels of TNFR1, the expression levels of the seven other genes were confirmed by real-time PCR to be significantly increased in TB patients (Figure 2.B).