Huang et al. reported that acid sphingomyelins produced by ceramide can participate in regulating NLRP3 inflammasome activation and inflammatory exosome release in podocytes during obesity via the ceramide signaling pathway, resulting in glomerular inflammation and injury associated with obesity-related glomerulopathy (Huang et al., 2023). The gene discussed is NLRP3; the disease is obesity due to melanocortin 4 receptor deficiency.