“…These endogenous components, including high‐mobility group box 1, ATP, S100 protein, heat shock protein and IL‐1 family proteins, served as alarmins and damage‐associated molecular patterns, are highly pro‐inflammatory in the extracellular milieu and are involved in innate immunity and inflammatory responses through the activation of pattern recognition receptors on host cells (Brydges et al, ; Chen & Nunez, ). According to previous studies, elevated level of extracellular high‐mobility group box 1, ATP, S100 protein and heat shock protein becomes the focus of attention in periodontitis (Binderman, Gadban, & Yaffe, ; Nethravathy, Alamelu, Arun, & Kumar, ; Sun et al, ; Tsybikov, Baranov, Kuznik, Malezhik, & Isakova, ; Xie, Deng, Gong, Ding, & Tang, ). Caspase‐3 rather than caspase‐1 is activated in the pyroptotic cell death aroused by butyrate, so IL‐1β and IL‐18 are not upregulated.…”