PON1 and atherosclerosis: Similarly, PON1 knockout mice are more susceptible to atherosclerosis and their HDL is less able to prevent the accumulation of lipid peroxides on human LDL (Shih et al., 1998), whereas transgenic rodent models expressing human PON1 are protected against atherosclerosis (Tward et al., 2002; Zhang et al., 2010).