A diverse number of molecules implicated in inflammatory conditions, such uric acid crystals associated with gout (Martinon et al., 2006), increased lipids [palmitic acid (Abderrazak et al., 2015), ceramide (Vandanmagsar et al., 2011), cholesterol crystals (Duewell et al., 2010)] and glucose or islet amyloid polypeptide (IAPP) (Masters et al., 2010) associated with the metabolic syndrome, atherosclerosis and type 2 diabetes, have been reported to activate NLRP3. Here, NLRP3 is linked to metabolic syndrome.