Further, the accumulated capsular strains induce the secretion of pro-inflammatory cytokines through various signaling pathways, such as TLR4 (Yang et al., 2011) or NLRP3 (Hua et al., 2015), ultimately leading to irreversible organic damage, just like the lung tissues of K7-challenged mice at 48 h after infection. Here, NLRP3 is linked to infection.