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Epidemiological and tissue histological studies have strongly implicated bacterial and viral infections underlying the pathophysiology of atherosclerosis in humans. However, the mechanism underlying this relationship has not been understood.
To test whether atherosclerosis may be driven by neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs) induced by lipopolysaccharide (LPS), investigators injected hypercholesterolemic mice with a single dose of LPS and assessed both aortic root atherosclerosis and myeloid cell adhesion.
The researchers showed that LPS expanded the size of atherosclerotic lesions by monocyte accumulation and that the effect was driven by NETs deposited along the arterial lumen. Pharmacologic inhibition of NET formation abrogated lesion ex…