Like HIV infection, nicotine is known to drive endothelial dysfunction by promoting ROS, mitochondrial dysfunction, and NLRP3 inflammasome activation (Ghosh et al., 2009; Hossain et al., 2011; Hutamekalin et al., 2008; Kousik et al., 2012; Manda, Mittapalli, Bohn, et al., 2010; Pimentel et al., 2020; Zhang et al., 2019). The gene discussed is NLRP3; the disease is HIV infectious disease.