Links Between Inflammation and Cardiometabolic Diseases

Over the past two decades, the number of subjects with cardiometabolic diseases (CMD) such as atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease (CVD), dyslipidemia, insulin resistance and diabetes have been rising. Characterizing these disease states reveals that inflammation is a common feature of CMD; however, mechanistic links between inflammation and these disease states in humans remain poorly understood. In this protocol, we aim to characterize inflammation within the blood vessels, blood, fat and skin in diabetes and coronary artery disease compared to those without disease. We hypothesize that diabetes and coronary disease will be systemic inflammatory states and will provide an important frame of reference for parameters found on novel imaging techniques in another ongoing protocol trying to understand how skin inflammation affects risk for CMD and CVD (13-H-0065).