TNF and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: Chen et al. suggested that TNF-α stimulates interleukin-6 (IL-6) and interleukin-8 (IL-8) generation, activating the nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) pathway by the degradation of IκB-α and the phosphorylation and nuclear migration of NF-κB p65, highlight the role of TNF-α in the pathogenesis of chronic inflammation, suggesting that TNF-α may be a promising target for the treatment of airway inflammatory diseases especially COPD (Brightling et al., 2008; Herfs et al., 2012; Chen et al., 2020), which were consistented with our study.