Tumour necrosis factor (TNF) is a classical, pleiotropic pro-inflammatory cytokine. It is also the first ‘adipokine’ described to be produced from adipose tissue, regulated in obesity and proposed to contribute to obesity-associated metabolic disease. In this review, we provide an overview of TNF in the context of metabolic inflammation or metaflammation, its discovery as a metabolic messenger, its sites and mechanisms of action and some critical considerations for future research. Although we focus on TNF and the studies that elucidated its immunometabolic actions, we highlight a conceptual framework, generated by these studies, that is equally applicable to the complex network of pro-inflammatory signals, their biological activity and their integration with metabolic regulation, and to the field of immunometabolism more broadly.

肿瘤坏死因子 (TNF) 是一种经典的多效性促炎细胞因子。它也是第一个被描述为由脂肪组织产生的“脂肪因子”，在肥胖中受到调节，并被认为有助于肥胖相关的代谢疾病。在这篇综述中，我们概述了代谢性炎症或变炎症背景下的 TNF、它作为代谢信使的发现、它的位点和作用机制以及未来研究的一些重要考虑因素。尽管我们专注于 TNF 和阐明其免疫代谢作用的研究，但我们强调了这些研究产生的概念框架，该框架同样适用于促炎信号的复杂网络、它们的生物活性及其与代谢调节的整合，以及到更广泛的免疫代谢领域。