Despite the anti-inflammatory effects of cortisol, IUGR fetuses exhibited elevated circulating inflammatory cytokines, including tumor necrosis factor α (TNFα), interleukin-1β (IL-1β), and IL-6 (Cadaret et al., 2019b; Zhang et al., 2021), and lower concentrations of anti-inflammatory IL-10 and IL-12 (Huang et al., 2019). Here, TNF is linked to fetal growth restriction.