ABSTRACT
The possibility of an association between atherosclerosis and infectious diseases was proposed as early as the beginning of this century (1,2). During the last two decades, there has been a renewed interest in this hypothesis, especially since 1978, when Fabricant et al. found that chickens infected with a herpes-type virus developed vascular lesions resembling human atherosclerosis (3). Another burst of research interest followed after the study by Saikku et al. (4) associating Chlamydia pneumoniae with atherosclerosis.
