NLRP3 and age-related macular degeneration: In AMD, NLRP3-dependent cleavage and activation of pro-inflammatory cytokine IL-1β (Halle et al., 2008) has been shown to drastically increase excessive inflammation in the retina, (Wooff et al., 2019), and is identified to play a key role in disease pathogenesis causing progressive photoreceptor cell death.