Bacterial signatures in atherosclerotic lesions represent human commensals and pathogens

Many studies have reported the presence of a variety of bacterial sequences from atherosclerotic lesions. However, the results obtained with these PCR technologies may have been skewed by methodological contaminants. After our subtraction approach, 63% of the remaining sequence-types from sites of aortic atherosclerosis were related to those of known human pathogens. This may imply that advanced atherosclerotic plaques accumulate bacterial DNA.