PA Engineer, this presser links the complete article. I just read the abstract so far. According to my pathology teacher in med school, they found "fatty streaks" in in various major arteries while performing autopsies of fairly young American killed in action during the Korean War. These "fatty streaks" were thought to be precursors of atherosclerotic arterial disease, in particular, coronary artery disease. Maybe we'll live long enough to find out.
IIRC, they eventually found crystals of cholesterol in atherosclerotic plaque as well as macrophages, cells of the innate immune system.
Carotid Plaque Age Is a Feature of Plaque Stability Inversely Related to Levels of Plasma Insulin
This is a combined ping of the diabetes and immunology lists. FReepmail if you want on or off either list.
I haven’t been able to locate it, but there was a recent study that showed an increase in plaques in some individuals but no difference in the incidence of heart attacks between those people and the ones without the plaques. Scientists get hooked on these markers, and sometimes they turn out to be a red herring.
I still say there is more that they don’t know, than what they do about diabetes.