HMGB1 and infectious disease: Many studies have reported that the NLRP3 inflammasome is involved in HMGB1 elevation in sepsis (Lamkanfi et al., 2010), inflammatory kidney disease (Zhang et al., 2020), acute lung injury (Hou et al., 2018), and other infectious diseases (Willingham et al., 2009; Yu et al., 2019), and most studies have focused on immune cells such as macrophages and microglia.