Atherosclerosis articles from across Nature Portfolio

IgM antibodies have gained much attention as risk markers of atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, but the exact antigenic determinants and the full spectrum of functions remain to be defined. A better understanding of the potentially diverse nature of the antigens that they recognize will help to dissect the function of IgM in atherosclerosis.

Lipophagy is a type of selective autophagy that targets lipid droplets for degradation. Since the discovery of lipophagy in 2009, research has uncovered a central role for this process in cellular lipid metabolism, including in atherogenic foam cells. Therefore, increasing lipophagy might be a therapeutic target to reverse lipid build-up in atherosclerosis.

Statins exert cardiovascular protective effects that are independent of cholesterol lowering. Using endothelial cells derived from induced pluripotent stem cells, Liu et al. show that statins can improve endothelial dysfunction by inhibiting endothelial–mesenchymal transition via epigenetic regulation of the GGTase–RhoA–YAP1–SOX9 signaling pathway.

Excessive salt intake is a known risk factor for cardiovascular disease commonly associated with hypertension. However, we propose that a high-salt diet can promote cardiovascular and other diseases independently of high blood pressure through inflammatory pathways that increase the production of myeloid cells.

The contribution of platelets to atherothrombosis is well established. Accumulating genome-wide association studies have revealed several variants of genes encoding molecules along the nitric oxide (NO)–soluble guanylyl cyclase (sGC)–cyclic guanosine-3′,5′-monophosphate (cGMP) pathway that are associated with increased risk of coronary artery disease; however, the cell types and functional impact of these risk variants remain poorly understood. Mauersberger et al. now demonstrate that platelet-specific knockout of a transcript encoding sGC increased atherosclerosis, whereas pharmacological stimulators of sGC reduced lesions via a paracrine effect of angiopoietin-1 on endothelial cell–leukocyte interactions.

Adipose tissue is a specialized connective tissue and a major endocrine organ. Brown adipose tissue (BAT) secretes factors that modulate whole-body metabolic homeostasis and can affect distant organs. The discovery that BAT-secreted neuregulin 4 influences atherosclerotic progression opens new opportunities for treating atherosclerosis.