Sputum neutrophilia in asthma is strongly associated with increased production of several cytokines including IL-1β, IL-6, CXCL8, IL-12, IL-17A and TNF (Sajjan et al., 2006; Yang et al., 2018; Hynes and Hinks, 2020), and this correlates with bacterial burden, in particular Gamma-proteobacteria (Brown et al., 2022). This evidence concerns the gene TNF and asthma.