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Pulling down the plug on atherosclerosis: Finding the culprit in your heart

Nature Medicine volume 17, pages 791–793 (2011)Cite this article

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Cardiovascular disease, the leading cause of death worldwide, is caused by atherothrombotic vascular occlusion, which leads to unstable angina (progressive ischemia of heart muscle), heart attacks, sudden cardiac death and stroke1. Atherothrombosis is a focal pathological process in medium-sized arteries, notably those that feed the heart and brain, and comprises two distinct stages. The first involves a decades-long accumulation of lipids, macrophages and other inflammatory cells, and extracellular matrix in the subendothelial space, or intima, of the blood vessel wall. This process alone does not cause acute cardiovascular events, because blood flow is preserved through outward remodeling of the arterial wall or, in the setting of gradual lumenal encroachment, new vessel formation2.

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Figure 1: Features of a culprit atherosclerotic lesion.

Katie Vicari

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  1. Ira Tabas is in the Department of Medicine, the Department of Pathology and Cell Biology and the Department of Physiology and Cellular Biophysics, Columbia University, New York, New York, USA.,

    Ira Tabas

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  1. Ira Tabas
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Correspondence to Ira Tabas.

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Tabas, I. Pulling down the plug on atherosclerosis: Finding the culprit in your heart. Nat Med 17, 791–793 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1038/nm0711-791

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