TNF and inflammatory bowel disease: IBD is conventionally known as a consequence of an aberrant inflammatory state in the intestinal mucosa that involves enhanced infiltration and activation of immune cells (Di Sabatino et al., 2012; Zhang and Li, 2014), which leads to abnormal expression of inflammatory molecules, such as tumor necrosis factor α (TNF-α), interferon-γ (IFN-γ) and interleukin-23 (IL-23) (Park et al., 2017).