Inflammation and atherosclerosis: direct versus indirect mechanisms

It is now widely accepted that the development of atherosclerotic lesions involves a chronic inflammatory response that includes both innate and adaptive immune mechanisms. However, it is still unclear precisely what induces the inflammatory response. Furthermore, inflammation within the blood vessel can be divided into direct mechanisms where the primary inflammatory events occur within the intima of the blood vessel and contribute to both the initiation and progression of the plaques and indirect mechanisms where inflammation at nonvascular sites can contribute to the progression of the lesions. The direct mechanisms include lipid deposition and modification, influx of lipoprotein associated factors and microparticles derived from many different cell types, and possibly bacterial and viral infection of vascular cells. Indirect mechanisms derive from inflammation related to autoimmune diseases, smoking, respiratory infection, and pollution exposure, and possibly periodontal disease and gastric infection. The mechanisms include secretion of cytokines and other inflammatory factors into the circulation with subsequent uptake into the plaques, egress and recruitment of activated inflammatory cells, formation of dysfunctional HDL and crossreactive autoantibodies.