way or the other so here is a speeding up over what one might see over many many years okay so this is the blood vessel and this is where the blood would travel and this is the atherosclerosis plaque you don't need an infection to start that having infections may promote some atherosclerosis but infection it's not the biggest cause of atherosclerosis we'll talk about the risk factors in a minute but what do you think is in that plaque this is not there is some inflammatory component but that's not the main component cholesterol exactly