IL1A and infection: Taken together with previous studies which have demonstrated that IL-33 is also highly susceptible to processing and activation by allergen-associated proteases (9, 10) and a recent report which demonstrates that human and murine IL-36γ can be processed by Aspergillus fumigatus protease (29), this suggests that IL-1 family cytokines may have evolved to function as sentinels for aberrant protease activity that is typically associated with infection or tissue damage (reviewed in ref. 11).