NLRP3 and major depressive disorder: In preclinical studies, Nlrp3-null mutant mice were resilient to the effects of stress on depression-like behavior (Iwata et al., 2016; Yue et al., 2017), and Nlrp3 expression was increased in peripheral blood mononuclear cells from untreated patients with MDD (Alcocer-Gómez et al., 2014).