Can DCs forecast atherosclerosis?

Atherosclerotic lesions are initiated mostly at vessel branch points and curvatures, where blood flow is irregular and inflammatory gene expression is high. Circulating blood cells—including macrophages, T cells, and dendritic cells (DCs)—accumulate in these areas at steady state, creating a scaffold on which the lesion is built. On page 2073, Jongstra-Bilen et al. suggest that it is DC build-up that most portends future lesion development.

Although many cell types have been shown to congregate in lesion-prone regions of vessels, few studies have analyzed the relative abundance of these cell types in lesion-prone and lesion-resistant regions. Nor have they compared the cellular composition in atherosclerosis-susceptible and -resistant strains of mice.

Jongstra-Bilen and colleagues now show that, in normal mice, DCs (but not T cells) were 100 times more abundant in lesion-prone areas of the aorta than...