APOE and pneumococcal infection: Data generated during development of the model suggests that high fat diet fed ApoE-/- mice may be more susceptible to severe pneumococcal infection compared to wild type mouse strains, which would be consistent with previous studies which have demonstrated that ApoE can protect against the development of sepsis (Rensen et al., 1997; de Bont et al., 2000; Laskowitz et al., 2000; Vonk et al., 2004).