Conversely, the anti-inflammatory signaling hormone, 17β-estradiol, which has been linked to the lower incidence of ALS in women (de Jong et al., 2013), may have an inverse effect and improve motor performance by reducing NLRP3 inflammasome expression and function, with associated motor neuronal cell survival (Heitzer et al., 2017). Here, NLRP3 is linked to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis.