Evaluation of Inflammasome Activation in Peripheral Blood Mononuclear Cells of Hemodialysis Treated Patients with Glomerulonephritis

Recently, it has been found that abnormal activation of inflammasomes, the intracellular multiprotein complexes, plays an important role in the pathogenesis and the development of inflammatory diseases. To determine whether the NOD-like receptor family pyrin domain-containing 3 (NLRP3) inflammasome is involved in chronic inflammatory condition reported in glomerulonephritic- hemodialysis (HD) patients, we investigated the mRNA levels of NLRP3, CASP-1, ASC, IL-1β, IL-18, NLRC4, and P2X7 in human peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) collected from 28 glomerulonephritic-HD patients. To confirm the mRNA quantification results, we investigated the IL-1ß content and Caspase 1 activity in serum and PBMC lysates, respectively. Compared with PBMCs derived from healthy subjects, genes encoding proinflammatory cytokines such as IL-1β and IL-18 as well as NLRP3, ASC, CASP-1 were markedly overexpressed in those derived from patients. Moreover, there was no significant difference between the expression level of P2X 7 mRNA in PBMCs isolated from glomerulonephritis-HD patients and controls. The serum level of active IL1-β and cell lysate CASP-1 activity were up-regulated in patients compared to controls. We also revealed that PBMCs isolated from glomerulonephritis-HD patients had elevated mRNA levels of NLRC4 compared to controls, suggesting the priming of NLRC4 inflammasome. These results revealed that the NLRP3-ASC-caspase-1 axis might have a role in increased inflammation severity reported in glomerulonephritic patients undergoing hemodialysis. These findings provide new insights into molecular mechanisms underlying chronic inflammation in HD- glomerulonephritic patients. Additionally, the NLRP3 inflammasome pathway can be attractive as a potential therapeutic target for complication avoidance in HD- glomerulonephritic patients.