In concert with chemokines, TNF and TNFRs are involved in the regulation of inflammatory processes like arthritis, of infectious diseases including HIV infection, and of malignancies, since chronic inflammation has been recognized to play a major role in carcinogenesis [3,4,5].TNF was first recognized at the protein level, followed by identification of its cDNA sequence [4,6,7]. This evidence concerns the gene TNF and arthritic joint disease.