TNF and Autoimmunity: TNF is known to have widespread and profound effects on both the activation and the proliferation of different subsets of immune cells in several disease states.In vitro anti-TNF blockage, used in T-cell monocyte co-cultures of patients with the autoimmune disorder thrombocytopenia, produced a robust proliferation of the immunomodulatory regulatory T (Treg) cells71; interestingly, this Treg cell expansion was dependent on TNFR2 and not TNFR1.