IL6 and Hypertension: Subsequently, we and other investigators extracted texture features from plaque-free segments of the common carotid artery wall and demonstrated that grayscale texture features and measures of echolucency are associated with several traditional and inflammatory CVD risk factors (e.g., hypertension, body mass index, diabetes mellitus, interleukin-6, and fibrinogen) and predict incident adverse CVD events (1, 6, 7, 19–21).