Scientists of the Global Cardiovascular Risk Consortium under the auspices of the Department of Cardiology at the University Heart & Vascular Center of the Medical Center Hamburg-Eppendorf (UKE) and the German Center for Cardiovascular Research (DZHK) have proven that the five classic cardiovascular risk factors overweight, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, smoking, and diabetes mellitus are directly connected to more than half of all cardiovascular diseases worldwide. High blood pressure is the most significant factor for the occurrence of heart attacks and strokes.

Innate immunity provides much more than an initial host defense against microbial infection. Besides providing a broad range of protection against infection, components of innate immunity respond to tissue injury; they promote repair, contribute to the genesis of autoimmunity, respond to vaccines, and watch for cancer. Beyond these clearly immunological conditions, innate immunity is implicated in allergy, atherosclerosis, malignancy, obesity and osteoporosis conditions that plague many patients including transplant recipients.

The innate alloimmunity enables living beings to survive. How does it work in detail? Prof. Dr. Walter G. Land describes the mechanisms and dynamics in his textbook "Innate Alloimmunity - Part 1: Innate Immunity and Host Defense".

"Since early on in evolution multicellular organisms have had to struggle to protect themselves against pathogens. Mechanisms for discriminating ´self ´ from ´nonself´ evolved to do this task, launching a long history of host-pathogen coevolution. Over the course of this never-ending cycle, evolution of mechanisms of immune defense has resulted in several effective strategies.