GDF15 and atherosclerosis: Animal studies suggest that MIC-1/GDF-15 is anti-inflammatory (Breit et al., 2011) and neuroprotective (Strelau et al., 2000), promotes longevity (Wang et al., 2014a) and neurogenesis (Kim et al., 2015), and inhibits atherosclerosis development (Johnen et al., 2012).