In this regard, Vandanmagsar et al. showed that adding ceramide to adipose tissue explants led to NLRP3-dependent IL-1β production, suggesting that ceramide acts a danger signal to stimulate the NLRP3 inflammasome activation [7], however, there have been no studies to date exploring the effects of ceramide production on obesity-induced inflammasome activation in podocytes and associated glomerular injury. The gene discussed is NLRP3; the disease is obesity due to melanocortin 4 receptor deficiency.