Atherosclerosis

Atherosclerosis reduces the inner diameter of arteries.

Researchers at Columbia and Harvard Universities are working on a unique new way to treat atherosclerosis, a hardening of the arteries that can lead to heart attack or stroke.

The researchers found that, although a large proportion of their test subjects didn’t have the traditional risk factors for atherosclerosis, they did show discrete signs, such as a greater waist circumference, and visceral fat covering the internal organs within the chest and abdomen.

Near-synonym: ASCVD

Mostly, the microbiome is beneficial. It helps with digestion and enables people to extract a lot more calories from their food than would otherwise be possible. Research over the past few years, however, has implicated it in diseases from atherosclerosis to asthma to autism.