CXCL12 and atherosclerosis: It has been known that platelets are also involved in the development and manifestation of atherosclerosis by secreting chemokines including CXCL4 or platelet factor 4, CCL5, CXCL12 to recruit monocytes or neutrophils to promote local inflammatory processes at sites of vascular injury (Bakogiannis et al., 2019).