NLRP3 and chronic kidney disease: To assess whether NLR pyrin domain-containing protein 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome, a multiprotein complex that mediates the activation of caspase-1 (CASP-1) and pro-inflammatory cytokines IL-18 and IL-1β, could be involved in the chronic inflammatory state observed in chronic kidney disease patients undergoing hemodialysis treatment (CKD-HD), we employed several biomolecular techniques including RT-PCR, western blot, FACS analysis, confocal microscopy and microarray.