Patients characteristics, including sex, age, BMI, past medical history (hypertension, diabetes and heart disease), plasma biomarkers, medication history (antithrombotic, lipid-regulating drugs), biomarkers of systemic inflammation (leukocyte, hs-CRP, neutrophile granulocyte, ESR) and APOE genotype, were summarized and included in this study (Table 1). Here, CRP is linked to diabetes mellitus.