BACKGROUND

In Western societies, atherosclerotic cardiovascular dis-ease is a major cause of morbidity and mortality of hu-mans. Atherosclerosis as a disease is a complex process involving multiple genetic and environmental factors (1).

Over the last three decades a number of animal models of atherosclerosis have been produced. These models include: nonhuman primates, pigs, rabbits, and chickens. With the exception of heritable hyperlipidemia of Watanabe rabbits as models of human familial hypercholes-terolemia (2), no one small laboratory animal model mimics the human atherosclerotic disease. Mice as a species are highly resistant to atherosclerosis. The only ex-ception in mice is the C57BL/6 strain. When fed a very high cholesterol diet containing cholic acid, however, the vascular lesions in the C57BL/6 differ from the human condition in the histologic nature and location and are possibly attributed to a chronic inflammatory state rather