Human platelets produce and constitute the main source of IL-18 in the circulation (44.25)
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract IL-18 is a pro-inflammatory cytokine belonging to the IL-1 family. The cytokine is known to be produced from macrophages, dendritic cells, keratinocytes, adrenal cortex etc in the body. The cytokine is produced as an inactive precursor protein, which is cleaved into mature form by activated caspase 1. We show here for the first time that human platelets contain abundant amounts of this cytokine, and release it upon activation. The platelets also contain components of the inflammasome, which activate caspase 1 and process the IL-18 precursor into mature form during the platelet activation process. Different activating agents activate platelets and release IL-18 to variable extent, the maximum being observed with thrombin. Furthermore, the released cytokine further activates platelets and enhances platelets to produce more IL-18. In addition to the cytokine, the platelets also release its antagonist, IL-18 binding protein (IL-18BP), upon activation. Surprisingly, a part of the cytokine appears to be synthesized within platelets. We also show here for the first time that inflammasome assembly occurs in platelets and the platelet-released IL-18 constitutes the major source of this cytokine in the circulation, as we found little amount of this cytokine in platelet-free plasma. Our findings have important implications for chronic inflammatory diseases, metabolic syndrome and cardiovascular diseases in which increased IL-18 levels play a pathogenic role.
Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.
How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.008 | 0.003 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".