In our study, we observed that the serum level of CLU was upregulated in diabetic atherosclerosis patients within our cohort, as well as in the GEO dataset of diabetic atherosclerosis patients and in our diabetic atherosclerosis models, which is similar with small heat shock proteins (sHSPs) as a stress-induced protein (Wyatt et al., 2009). This evidence concerns the gene CLU and atherosclerosis.