TNF and diabetes mellitus: The current study also found that diabetes-induced spinal cord microglial activation, as seen by up-regulation of Iba1 expression, is consistent with the findings of Mandour et al. (2022) and Wang et al. (2022), as microglia are the main provider of inflammatory cytokines; TNF-α, IL-6, and IL-1β, in response to neuronal degeneration.