TNF and Sepsis: We also wanted to probe for significant differences between septic patients with and without this predictive TCM Zheng with regard to APACHE II score, which measures the deteriorated general condition of patients [17], and some host response cytokines have been reported as closely related to sepsis mortality: tumor necrosis factor-α  (TNF-α), Interleukin-6 (IL-6), Interleukin-8 (IL-8), Interleukin-10 (IL-10), and Interleukin-18 (IL-18) [18–24].