Previous studies found that several functional SNPs in TNF, LTA, TNFRSF1A and TNFRSF1B were associated with inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. In our study, SNPs in TNF, LTA, and TNFRSF1A and TNFRSF1B were selected based on the following criteria: (1) location within the gene region (promoter, intron, exon, 39UTR and 59UTR); (2) association with inflammatory and autoimmune diseases such as sepsis, asthma, tuberculosis, systemic lupus erythematosus, rheumatoid arthritis and Crohn's disease in more than two studies. A total of ten SNPs were selected and genotyped in our study. Location and characterization of all selected SNPs were listed in Table 2 .