TNF and type 2 diabetes mellitus: To further investigate the roles of nesfatin-1, adiponectin, IL-6, and TNF-α in the development of T2DM via prediabetes, patients were distributed to four subgroups with cutoff 2.8 of HOMA-IR (29), which included 29 T2DM patients with HOMA-IR <2.8 (subgroup A), 43 T2DM patients with HOMA-IR >2.8 (subgroup B), 52 prediabetics with HOMA-IR <2.8 (subgroup C), and 23 prediabetics with HOMA-IR >2.8 (subgroup D).