Researchers in Germany reported Wednesday they had managed to create diamonds by baking small spheres of carbon known as carbon onions. The researchers said the findings would help them understand the nature of the direct graphite-diamond transition and the substances could have useful electrical properties. The suspect is a bacterium called Chlamydia pneumoniae. There are other studies that support this association. Plaque formation during atheriosclerosis is believed to occur in response to injury to the arterial wall.
Bacterial infection is a quite plausible mechanism for such an injury to occur.
Other factors that are known to be associated with heart disease such as LDL cholesterol levels and smoking. This evidence for a bacterial cause of plaques in heart disease is tantalizing and definitely worthy of further investigation. However, the bacterium may be an opportunistic infection rather than a causative agent in heart disease. However, medical researchers may be more accepting of this association of a pathogen with a chronic disease due to a previously overlooked example. The prior case was the link between Heliobacter pylori and peptic ulcers.