Pyroptosis is a lytic and inflammatory type of programmed cell death that is usually triggered by inflammasomes and executed by gasdermin proteins. The main characteristics of pyroptosis are cell swelling, membrane perforation, and the release of cell contents. In normal physiology, pyroptosis plays a critical role in host defense against pathogen infection. However, excessive pyroptosis may cause immoderate and continuous inflammatory responses that involves in the occurrence of inflammatory diseases. Attractively, as immunogenic cell death, pyroptosis can serve as a new strategy for cancer elimination by inducing pyroptotic cell death and activating intensely antitumor immunity. To make good use of this double-edged sword, the molecular mechanisms, and therapeutic implications of pyroptosis in related diseases need to be fully elucidated. In this review, we first systematically summarize the signaling pathways of pyroptosis and then present the available evidences indicating the role of pyroptosis in inflammatory diseases and cancer. Based on this, we focus on the recent progress in strategies that inhibit pyroptosis for treatment of inflammatory diseases, and those that induce pyroptosis for cancer therapy. Overall, this should shed light on future directions and provide novel ideas for using pyroptosis as a powerful tool to fight inflammatory diseases and cancer.

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Perfluoroalkyl acids (PFAAs) are a group of common chemicals that ubiquitously exist in wildlife and humans. Experimental data suggest that they may alter T-lymphocyte functioning in situ by preferentially enhancing the development of T-helper 2 (TH2)- and inhibiting TH1-lymphocyte development and might increase allergic inflammation, but few human studies have been conducted. To evaluate the association between serum PFAAs concentrations and T-lymphocyte-related immunological markers of asthma in children, and further to assess whether gender modified this association, 231 asthmatic children and 225 non-asthmatic control children from Northern Taiwan were recruited into the Genetic and Biomarker study for Childhood Asthma. Serum concentrations of ten PFAAs and levels of TH1 [interferon (IFN)-γ, interleukin (IL)-2] and TH2 (IL-4 and IL-5) cytokines were measured. The results showed that asthmatics had significantly higher serum PFAAs concentrations compared with the healthy controls. When stratified by gender, a greater number of significant associations between PFAAs and asthma outcomes were found in males than in females. Among males, adjusted odds ratios for asthma among those with the highest versus lowest quartile of PFAAs exposure ranged from 2.59 (95% CI: 1.14, 5.87) for the perfluorobutanesulfonate (PFBS) to 4.38 (95% CI: 2.02, 9.50) for perfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS); and serum PFAAs were associated positively with TH2 cytokines and inversely with TH1 cytokines among male asthmatics. Among females, no significant associations between PFAAs and TH2 cytokines could be detected. In conclusion, increased serum PFAAs levels may promote TH cell dysregulation and alter the availability of key TH1 and TH2 cytokines, ultimately contributing to the development of asthma that may differentially impact males to a greater degree than females. These results have potential relevance in asthma prevention.

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Background The short-term effects of particulate matter (PM) exposure on childhood asthma exacerbation and disease control rate is not thoroughly assessed in Chinese population yet. The previous toxic effects of PM exposure are either based on long-term survey or experimental data from cell lines or mouse models, which also needs to be validated by real-world evidences. Methods We evaluated the short-term effects of PM exposure on asthma exacerbation in a Chinese population of 3106 pediatric outpatientsand disease control rate (DCR) in a population of 3344 children using case-crossover design. All the subjects enrolled are non-hospitalized outpatients. All data for this study were collected from the electronic health record (EHR) in the period between January 1, 2016 and June 30, 2018 in Xiamen, China. Results We found that exposure to PM 2.5 and PM 10 within the past two weeks was significantly associated with elevated risk of exacerbation (OR = 1.049, p < 0.001 for PM 2.5 and OR = 1.027, p < 0.001 for PM 10 ). In addition, exposure to PM 10 was associated with decreased DCR (OR = 0.976 for PM 10 , p < 0.001). Conclusions Our results suggest that exposure to both PM 10 and PM 2.5 has significant short-term effects on childhood asthma exacerbation and DCR, which serves as useful epidemiological parameters for clinical management of asthma risk in the sensitive population. Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (10.1186/s12887-019-1530-7) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

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