showed that hydroxyurea effectively treated atherosclerosis, reduced serum cholesterol levels, modified the gut microbiota at various levels, and affected cholesterol absorption by decreasing Niemann-Pick C1-like 1 in the epithelial cells of small intestines of apolipoprotein E knockout ApoE(-/-) mice fed on a high-fat diet (Yang et al., 2022b). This evidence concerns the gene APOE and atherosclerosis.