Together, these findings demonstrate that, whilst systemic immune cells from asthma patients are more sensitive to nigericin-induced inflammasome activation (signal two), an increased response to both LPS-induced priming (signal one) and nigericin-induced activation (signal two) of the NLRP3 inflammasome is a unique feature of systemic immune cells in patients with severe asthma. This evidence concerns the gene NLRP3 and asthma.