Talk:Tumor necrosis factor

Untitled
I found some historical information here. JFW | T@lk  12:00, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

--- why is it called 'tumor necrosis factor' -- some background would be good, I'll see what I can find --hmackiernan

"Inhibition of TNFα promotes the inflammatory response, which in turn causes many of the clinical problems associated with autoimmune disorders such as rheumatoid arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis, Crohn's disease, and psoriasis. These disorders are sometimes treated by inhibiting TNFα "

This seems contradictory. If inhibition of TNFa promotes the inflammatory response, why would you treat these conditions by inhibiting TNFa??

I noticed the above contradiction as well and think the first part of the phrase must be an error. However, I'm not a medical expert, so I don't dare edit the TNF page.

I removed the offending phrase (as I am about to refer people to the page). Out of curiosity, I just went back and checked the history. It was clearly an editing glitch, with the phrase left over from what is now covered in the second sentence. -- Bob Kerns

viral replication
doesnt tnf block instead of cause viral replication??? Martious 14:52, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

How about Tumor Necrosis Factor beta? It is not discussed at all in this page. TNF-alpha is involved in Toxic Shock Syndrome among other things. I can't find any decent (recent) reviews on the topic.

disabling auto updates
Arcadian, just wondering why you chose to disable all updates of the ProteinBoxBot. Clearly this is a pretty mature article so the impact of PBB edits is proportionally less. (And this was also one of our first edits, and in retrospect, I would not have added the summary and further reading sections where reasonable summaries and reference lists exist.) Was there a particular reason you also wanted to disable the infobox updates? Not trying to convince you otherwise, just trying to understand for the purposes of making sure PBB plays nicely with human editors... AndrewGNF 18:01, 13 November 2007 (UTC)

More general entry: TNF, then subheadings TNF-alpha, TNF-beta?
I'm currently studying this stuff, so I'm no expert, but I'm noticing some confusion. Wouldn't it make sense to merge the entry on TNF with the present one? It could start with a general discussion of TNF and then differentiate between the two types. 85.178.26.162 (talk) 13:30, 6 January 2008 (UTC)

I agree. It is clear to me that this article is much better than the [Tumor necrosis factors]] article (which contains very little). I strongly suggest that they are merged.JustAnotherKinase (talk) 15:29, 4 July 2010 (UTC)

I disagree with the proposed merger because there are (as of 2007) 19 identified members of the TNF family. I agree that this main page is much better than the TNF family ("factors") page, but the family page needs updating and expansion. The expansion would make it unwieldy inside the main TNF page.C4dn (talk) 06:40, 26 July 2011 (UTC)

the first sentence is very good. can you do the same for osteoclast activating factor
osteoclast activating factor has a bunch of different names that it goes by and I think it has sorta evolved with time. I am impressed by the first sentence / alternate names of TNF-alpha and wish someone would do the same for Osteoclast activating factor. Off the top of my head I think it is IL-6 and a subtype of IL-1. But I'm probably wrong so please verify. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.43.212.236 (talk) 07:53, 28 April 2008 (UTC)
 * http://www.google.com/search?q=osteoclast+activating+factor&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a
 * http://www.grt.kyushu-u.ac.jp/spad/account/ligand/il1.html
 * http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&safe=off&client=firefox-a&rls=org.mozilla%3Aen-US%3Aofficial&hs=9EO&q=osteoclast+activating+factor+IL-1&btnG=Search —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.43.212.236 (talk) 07:56, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Why did you remove the clooned form in the consept..... —Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.147.153.152 (talk) 22:56, 14 September 2009 (UTC)

the cytokine formerly known as
Why does the first sentence include the line "formerly known as tumor necrosis factor-alpha or TNF-α" when it is still currently known as TNF-α? I see that there is a section at the bottom citing a paper which declares the opinion that it should be simply called 'TNF', but this should not imply that everyone else is following this opinion. markwdck (talk) 15:52, 15 February 2013 (UTC)

I totally agree. I the term "TNF" is completely ambiguous, if you read the literature (i.e. pubmed) everyone refers to the cytokine as TNF-α. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 152.23.176.212 (talk) 16:07, 6 March 2013 (UTC)


 * That's just wrong. "tumor necrosis factor-α" is still being used. E.g. Association between tumor necrosis factor-α antagonists and risk of cancer in patients with inflammatory bowel disease. JAMA. 2014 Jun 18;311(23):2406-13. doi: 10.1001/jama.2014.5613. I'm going to change it. --Nbauman (talk) 05:31, 26 December 2014 (UTC)

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:Interferon, alpha 1 which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 07:59, 15 May 2013 (UTC)

Nomenclature
This article uses TNFα without a hyphen. Elsewhere on wikipedia (such as when discussing TNF-ß), and in some literature, we see it with. Which usage is standard, or can both forms be freely used? --James Chenery (talk) 00:47, 28 June 2018 (UTC)


 * I see many 2020 journal articles referring to TNF-α, so I see no basis for the claim that this name is obsolete. I have modified this reference in the introduction. --Ben Best:Talk 15:03, 30 December 2020 (UTC)