APOE and hypertensive disorder: In the regression analysis of APOE and CCA-IMT at baseline, we found that E2 carriers had lower mean CCA-IMT (β: − 0.02 [95% CI − 0.04, − 0.004]) than E3 homozygotes when adjusting for age, sex, BMI, smoking status, alcohol consumption, sedentary lifestyle, hypertension and type 2 diabetes (Table 2).