IL-1β and IL-18 are crucial regulators of inflammation and immunity. Both cytokines are initially expressed as inactive precursors, which require processing by the protease caspase-1 for biological activity. Caspase-1 itself is activated in different innate immune complexes called inflammasomes. In addition, caspase-1 activity regulates unconventional protein secretion of many other proteins in...

Background MEditerranean FeVer (MEFV) gene encodes for the pyrin protein and a mutated pyrin is associated with a prolonged or augmented inflammation. Hence, various diseases were reported to be associated with familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) or carriers of MEFV mutations. However, systematic evaluation of all associated diseases in children with FMF has not been done previously. Aim The a...

Introduction Familial Mediterranean fever (FMF)(MIM 249100) is a hereditary autoinflammatory disorder characterized by episodes of inflammation in the absence of high-titer autoantibodies or antigen-specific T cells. The Mediterranean fever (MEFV) gene(OMIM 608107) located on chromosome 16p13.3, which encodes the 781-amino-acid protein pyrin, is the causative gene for this monogenic Mendelian d...

BACKGROUND Alefacept treatment is highly effective in a select group patients with moderate-to-severe psoriasis, and is an ideal candidate to develop systems to predict who will respond to therapy. A clinical trial of 22 patients with moderate to severe psoriasis treated with alefacept was conducted in 2002-2003, as a mechanism of action study. Patients were classified as responders or non-resp...

BACKGROUND Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) synovium is characterised by enhanced NF-kappaB activity and proinflammatory cytokines. Cryopyrin (CIAS-1, NALP-3, PYPAF-1) has been shown to regulate NF-kappaB and caspase-1 activation. OBJECTIVE To study the expression of cryopyrin, its effector molecule ASC, and its putative antagonist pyrin in RA and osteoarthritis (OA) synovium, and the main two cellu...

Inflammasomes are multiprotein complexes that critically control different aspects of innate and adaptive immunity. Among them we could highlight the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines that induce and maintain the inflammatory response. Usually, inflammasomes result from oligomerization of a nucleotide-binding domain-like receptor (NLR) after sensing different pathogenic or endogenous steril...

Proteins containing PAAD [pyrin, AIM (absent-in-melanoma), ASC [apoptosis-associated speck-like protein containing a CARD (caspase-recruitment domain)] and DD (death domain)-like] (PYRIN, DAPIN) domains are involved in innate immunity, regulating pathways leading to nuclear-factor-kappa B (NF-kappa B) and pro-caspase-1 activation. Many PAAD-family proteins have structures reminiscent of Nod-1, ...

Familial Mediterranean fever (FMF) is an inherited disease whose manifestations are acute but reversible attacks of sterile inflammation affecting synovial and serosal spaces. The FMF gene (MEFV) was recently cloned, and it codes for a protein (pyrin/marenostrin) homologous to known nuclear factors. We previously reported the deficient activity of a C5a/interleukin (IL)-8 inhibitor, a physiolog...