TNF and renal fibrosis: Mechanistically, several preliminary studies have revealed that SKI alleviated CKD and renal fibrosis by inhibiting pro-inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin-6, interleukin-1β, and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) expression (Zhang et al., 2020) and modulating TGF-β1/Smad3 and JAK2/STAT3 signaling pathways (Wu et al., 2015; Qin et al., 2021).