TNF and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: However, COPD females had a significantly lower normalized muscle NF-κB p50 level than male patients (0.6 vs. 1.1, p = 0.003), but there were no significant differences in normalized muscle NF-κB p65 or AP-1 DNA binding (Figure 3(c)) nor muscle TNF-α mRNA levels between groups (Figure 3(d)).