TNF and type 2 diabetes mellitus: We found that IL-1, IL-6 and TNFα were all at background levels in these long-standing T2D subjects and failed to show changes after Stem Cell Educator therapy (P = 0.557, P = 0.316, P = 0.603, respectively), probably because metabolic inflammation is a chronic sub-degree inflammation [8] and the plasma samples which were directly collected from the blood of T2D patients, not from the lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-activated monocytes of T2D subjects [27].