🧬🫀 What if inflammation is NOT the beginning of atherosclerosis?
That’s the provocative implication of this paper.
Using:
👉 human coronary arteries
👉 proteomics + RNAseq
👉 manifold learning + single-cell validation
the authors reconstructed the molecular timeline of early coronary atherosclerosis.
And the sequence is fascinating.
The first signal was NOT inflammation
The earliest changes were:
👉 loss of mitochondrial / oxidative metabolism
👉 vascular-unit dysfunction
👉 stromal and neurovascular remodeling
BEFORE the classic inflammatory macrophage phase emerged.
Translation
👉 Atherosclerosis may begin as a metabolic failure of the arterial wall
—not simply as “cholesterol accumulation + inflammation”.
One of the most interesting findings
A latent feature (LF6) showed early collapse of:
- oxidative phosphorylation
- β-oxidation
- mitochondrial proteins
especially in:
👉 pericytes
👉 vascular smooth muscle cells
Then came the inflammatory wave
Only later did the expected:
👉 macrophages
👉 CD14/CD163 signaling
👉 innate immune activation
become dominant.
Why this matters
Because it quietly challenges the way we conceptualize CAD.
We still diagnose disease when we see:
👉 stenosis
👉 calcification
👉 plaque burden
But this paper suggests the biology may already be deeply altered:
👉 years before structural plaque dominates imaging
My take
This is one of the more important mechanistic CAD papers in recent years.
Not because it “discovered inflammation”.
But because it proposes the much earlier sequence:
metabolic dysfunction
→ vascular remodeling
→ neuroimmune activation
→ inflammatory plaque biology
And this has a major implication for imaging
Eventually, imaging will have to evolve from:
❌ anatomy-centered
toward:
👉 biology-centered cardiovascular imaging
⚡ Because by the time we see advanced plaque…
the molecular disease may already be old.
Look ahead: we will need UHR imaging & advanced tissue characterization capabilities. Sounds like PCCT to me.
#Atherosclerosis #CardiovascularImaging #PlaqueBiology #PrecisionMedicine #CardiacCT #PCCT #Inflammation
@astyblues@r4ncio Eres un maldito bot o un pobre diablo que se escuda en un seudónimo para hablar así de mal de jóvenes que solo desean impedir algo ya escrito en la reglas de la universidad, en cualquier caso solo enciendes la ira de quienes queremos respeto y justicia en las instituciones.
@AbrahamValencia Pero si sanchez y Lopez Chau se llevan por 1 punto...qué diferencia encuentras? Mejor por un moderado y economista a un traidor de su propio presidente.
@contracultural Previsible, dirán en el congreso: que se queme él y no los otro 129. Por egoísta y no compartir la mermelada de kumquat de sus amigos chinos