After controlling for age and years of education, the Pearson correlation analysis showed that the TNF-α level was positively correlated with the PANSS-EC score (r = 0.3455, p = 0.0012), PANSS total score (r = 0.2679, p = 0.0132), positive (P) (r = 0.2682, p = 0.0131) and general psychopathology (G) subscores (r = 0.2772, p = 0.0102) in all patients with schizophrenia (significant after Bonferroni correction at p’s < 0.05/3; Fig. 2). Here, TNF is linked to schizophrenia.