Common NLRP3 inflammasome inhibitors and Covid-19: Divide and conquer

Severe SARS-CoV-2 infection causes systemic inflammation, cytokine storm, and hypercy-tokinemia due to activation of the release of pro-inflammatory cytokines that have been associated with case-fatality rate. The immune overreaction and cytokine storm in the in-fection caused by SARS-CoV-2 may be linked to NLRP3 inflammasome activation which has supreme importance in human innate immune response mainly against viral infec-tions. In SARS-CoV-2 infection, NLRP3 inflammasome activation results in the stimulation and synthesis of natural killer cells (NKs), NF kappa B, and interferon-gamma (INF-gamma), while in-hibiting IL-33 expression. Various effort s have identified selective inhibitors of NLRP3 in-flammasome. To achieve this, studies are exploring the screening of natural compounds and/or repurposing of clinical drugs to identify potential NLRP3 inhibitors. NLRP3 inflam-masome inhibitors are expected to suppress exaggerated immune reaction and cytokine storm-induced-organ damage in SARS-CoV-2 infection. Therefore, NLRP3 inflammasome in-hibitors could mitigate the immune-overreaction and hypercytokinemia in Covid-19 infec-tion. (c) 2022 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. on behalf of African Institute of Mathematical Sciences / Next Einstein Initiative. This is an open access article under the CC BY license ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ )