TNF and metabolic syndrome: Badawi et al. (2010) and Wang et al. (2013) discovered that several inflammatory markers are involved in type 2 diabetes. Moreover, elevated plasma concentrations of pro-inflammatory cytokines such as interleukin-1β (IL-1β) and tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) have been linked to insulin resistance and are found in obesity, metabolic syndrome and type 2 diabetes (Nilsson et al. 1998; Spranger et al. 2003).