TNF and Cachexia: In addition, many of the molecules that signal muscle wasting in cachexia, such as nuclear factor of kappa B (Wyke et al. 2004), TNF-α (Llovera et al. 1998a), and reactive oxygen intermediates (Buck and Chojkier 1996), have acute and/or persistent detrimental effects on cellular mechanisms of muscle contraction (Andrade et al. 1998; Cai et al. 2004; Hardin et al. 2008; Prochniewicz et al. 2008).