As expected, in both populations there was significantly more TNF-α present in the conditioned medium (CM) following TNF-α treatment (P = 0.0023 for effect of TNF-α, two-way ANOVA), but this increase was the same regardless of diabetes status (371.5 ± 63.6 vs 384.2 ± 97.3 pg/ml respectively; two-way ANOVA, n = 4; Fig. 1c). Here, TNF is linked to diabetes mellitus.