TNF and acute respiratory distress syndrome: Tanreqing can reduce the levels of IL-1, IL-6, TNF- α and inflammatory cytokines both in the Airway Inflammation model animal (Dong et al., 2013; Wei et al., 2016) and in patients with ALI/ARDS (Guo et al., 2018), which may be the mechanism for improving the Oxygenation Index.