NLRP3 and asthma: In order to further characterize NLRP3 inflammasome responses in immune cells from patients with asthma, we next assessed the release of IL-1β from PBMCs from healthy subjects, and patients with severe and non-severe asthma, following 2 and 4 h of pre-treatment with LPS (signal one)[29–31], prior to nigericin (signal two)-induced activation.