TNF and lumbar disc herniation: Molecular immunology and molecular biology studies have shown that inflammatory mediators can cause lumbar IVD degeneration, in other words, the degenerative lumbar IVD tissue can release interleukin (IL), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), and other inflammatory mediators, which stimulate the accumulation and activation of inflammatory cells and release numerous inflammatory transmitters, inducing osteoarticular neuropathic pain and participating in the pathogenesis and progression of lumbar disc herniation (Lu et al., 2020; Qi et al., 2020; Jiang et al., 2021).