Like ellagic acid, 5-(hydroxymethyl) furfural (Kong et al., 2019) and cinnamic acid (Liao et al., 2012) could downregulate inflammatory modulators, such as COX-2 and iNOS, in in vitro inflammatory model and in vivo carrageenan-induced paw edema model, respectively. The gene discussed is NOS2; the disease is edema.