IL18 and diabetic kidney disease: Prior research has identified key inflammatory mediators, including tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukins 1 (IL-1), interleukin-6 (IL-6), and interleukin-18 (IL-18), MCP-1, NF-κB, and NLRP3 inflammasome, as critical players in the inflammatory processes associated with DKD (Wada and Makino, 2013; Wu et al., 2024; Zhu et al., 2024).