In addition to protecting against phagocytosis, the capsule reduces the host inflammatory response by shielding the LPS O-antigen from innate immunity recognition, thus limiting immune cell recruitment in BALF and the production of pro-inflammatory cytokines (TNF-α, IFN-γ and IL-6) in the early and late stages of infection in the intranasal model [79,86,98]. Here, TNF is linked to infection.