TNF and Sepsis: 2016; Lv and Wang 2016). In this study, berberine not only reduced TLR4 upregulation, but also alleviated the increases of TNF-α and IL-1β amounts in the myocardial tissue in the SCM rat model. Inflammatory factors such as IL-6, IL-1β and TNF-α play key roles in SCM induced by sepsis (Wu et al. 2015). Our results are consistent with previous findings that berberine could suppress NF-κB activation induced by various inflammatory agents with a mild potency (Pandey et al. 2008).