TNF and postmenopausal osteoporosis: To date, several studies have reported that some functional genes, such as CYP11A1 in vitamin D and estrogen hormone-response pathways, the estrogen receptorα (ERα) gene, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-α gene, and TNFSF11, TNFRSF11A in the RANKL/RANK/OPG pathway, are implied to be associated with BMD in postmenopausal osteoporosis (Tu et al., 2015).