ITGAX and diabetes mellitus: The inducible plaque rupture model has been well described and used to induce plaque ruptures in mice, despite its imperfections to mimic human disease.24–26 This model could not allow the study of plaque erosion which is responsible for ∼25–40% of cardiovascular complications.36–38 A second limitation of the study is that we could not identify association between risk factors such as diabetes and IRF5 or CD11c expression in the carotid plaques due to the relatively limited number of patients included.