Christopher L. Jackson

TL;DR: The term "vulnerable patient" may be more appropriate and is proposed now for the identification of subjects with high likelihood of developing cardiac events in the near future and a quantitative method for cumulative risk assessment of vulnerable patients needs to be developed.

TL;DR: It is demonstrated that MMPs are directly involved in atherosclerotic plaque destabilization and clearly show that members of the MMP family have widely differing effects on atherogenesis.

TL;DR: In this article, the role of the mast cell proteases tryptase and chymase in activation of matrix-degrading metalloproteinases (MMPs) was investigated.

TL;DR: Plaque rupture occurs at high frequency in the brachiocephalic arteries of male apolipoprotein E–knockout mice after 8 weeks of fat feeding and pravastatin treatment inhibits early plaque rupture and is also effective when begun after unstable plaques have developed.

TL;DR: It is confirmed that plaque rupture is a frequent occurrence in the brachiocephalic arteries of apolipoprotein E knockout mice on a high-fat diet and the data show that ruptured plaques in these mice show many of the characteristics of vulnerable plaque in humans.