Activación y regulación del inflamasoma NLRP3 en las enfermedades infecciosas

inflammation is an immune response to infectious agents and to signals that arise from host molecules in stress situations or after tissue damage. many innate immune receptors take part in the inflammatory response and induce transcriptional activation leading to the production of a host of cytokines, chemokines and other inflammatory mediators. the il-1β cytokines are exceptional in that they not only require transcriptional activation but also a proteolytic processing into biologically active cytokines. this activation step is mediated by caspase-1, which in turn is controlled by cytosolic multimolecular complexes named inflammasomes. the nlrp3 inflammasome responds to aggregated or crystalline material, as well as to microbes or pore-forming toxins, but activation mechanisms are not fully understood. the importance of this innate signaling complex is highlighted by the existence of several mechanisms that regulate nlrp3 activation at different levels. in this article we review such mechanisms.