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21 September 2026
Self-promoted Plaques
Referred to as tertiary lymphoid organs (TLOs), abnormal foci of immune system tissue are found in arteries afflicted with atherosclerosis – a chronic inflammatory disease resulting from high levels of 'bad' cholesterol. Here, researchers have discovered autoantibodies ('self' attacking) made by the TLOs that react with the artery wall and promote the atheromatous plaques, providing evidence that atherosclerosis is in fact an autoimmune disease
Read the published research article here
Written by
- Image from work by Chuankai Zhang, Xi Zhang, Yi Ran, Zhihua Wang, Andreas J. R. Habenicht and Changjun Yin, and colleagues
- Division of Vascular Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Guangzhou, China
- Image originally published with a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
- Published in Nature Cardiovascular Research, September 2026
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