This seeming lack or counter-balance of the effect of inflammation on serum apoB levels probably represent the mechanism underlying the superior predicting significance of apoB and apoB/apoA-I ratio for CVD, compared to total cholesterol and LDL-C levels, which have been found consistently to be affected essentially by systemic inflammation in ESRD patients, and which were found not to be a reliable correlate of cardiovascular morbidity in our study. The gene discussed is APOB; the disease is inflammatory response.