This improvement was evident through several measures: i) a reduced histological lung injury score (Fig. 4c), ii) decreased total cell numbers in BALF (Fig. 4d), iii) diminished bacterial adherence and invasion in the lung (Fig. 4e, f, respectively) and bacterial burden in the spleen (Fig. 4g), iv) reduced total protein levels (Fig. 4h), and v) decreased levels of TNF-α and IL-6 in BALF 24 h after bacterial infection (Fig. 4i, j, respectively). This evidence concerns the gene TNF and bacterial infectious disease.