Dysregulated Nlrp3 inflammasome activation is associated with both heritable inflammatory diseases such as Muckle-Wells syndrome, familial cold autoinflammatory syndrome and neonatal onset multi-system inflammatory disease as well as acquired inflammatory diseases such as Alzheimer’s disease, gout, pseudogout, obesity, atherosclerosis, metabolic syndrome, type 2 diabetes mellitus and age-related macular degeneration47. The gene discussed is NLRP3; the disease is type 2 diabetes mellitus.