APOE and diabetes mellitus: To develop a murine model that can be used to study the role of diabetes and hypercholesterolaemia in aortic stiffness and in its protein expression, diabetic hypercholesterolaemic male Ins2+/Akita:apoE−/− mice and non‐diabetic hypercholesterolaemic female Ins2+/+:apoE−/− were crossed to produce diabetic hypercholesterolaemic Ins2+/Akita:apoE−/− mice (Table 1).