CPn is again found at the start of a disease process!
The latest research has proven a link between inflammation and atherosclerosis. In fact, it's now known that inflammation is responsible for the birth and growth of atherosclerosis. Here's how.
Cholesterol plaque begins, not as a disease, but as a normal, healthy response by the body. Cholesterol plaque contains many of the inflammatory elements that are designed to destroy infectious germs such as Chlamydia pneumoniae - the Heart Attack Germ - and repair damaged tissue. These elements are drawn to injured and infected arteries as part of the healing process.
One of the most important inflammatory elements are cells from the immune system called macrophages. As the animation above illustrates, when the wall of an artery is injured, these immune cells travel to the site of the injury and burrow into the artery wall. They produce healing inflammation in the surrounding tissue, which kills germs and repairs cells.
Unfortunately, immune cells can also be infected by germs such as Chlamydia pneumoniae. When immune cells burrow inside the artery, they carry the germ with them, creating more infection in the artery.
Even worse, infected immune cells can suck particles of cholesterol from the blood stream and carry them into the artery wall.
Inflammation is designed to be helpful only in the short-term; long-term episodes of inflammation can do great damage to the body. Since plaque is naturally drawn to the site of inflammation, long-term infection and inflammation continually draws cholesterol plaque to the artery over an extended period of time.
As the years pass by -- and infection and inflammation secretly simmer away inside their unsuspecting victims -- layer after layer of plaque is deposited inside the artery. These layers build into mounds of cholesterol that reduce the flow of blood through the artery, eventually causing many of the symptoms of cardiovascular disease, including strokes and heart attacks.
http://www.theheartattackgerm.com/a%20short2.htm