TNF and periodontitis: Our results showed that the presence of SB significantly inhibited inflammatory cell infiltration (Figures 3(a) and 3(b)) and prevented the increase of the relative mRNA expression of TNF-α, IL-1β, and IL-6 in both in vivo and in vitro models (Figures 3(e) and 5(c)), which indicates that SB effectively inhibited the inflammation in periodontitis.