Discovery of Cholesterol's Role in Atherosclerosis

Russian pathologist Nikolai Anichkov reported in 1913 that rabbits fed a diet supplemented with purified cholesterol dissolved in sunflower oil developed arterial lesions closely resembling human atherosclerosis, both to the naked eye and under the microscope, establishing the first experimental animal model directly linking dietary cholesterol to arterial disease. Anichkov found that the degree of arterial damage rose in proportion to how much cholesterol the rabbits absorbed, and his detailed study of the resulting plaques identified the smooth muscle cells, macrophages and lymphocytes that remain central to how atherosclerosis is understood today. His findings drew little attention for decades, in part because rabbits process cholesterol differently from humans and other researchers struggled to reproduce the result in other species, but later research vindicated the cholesterol-atherosclerosis link Anichkov had proposed, and the cholesterol-fed rabbit he introduced became a standard model for atherosclerosis research through much of the twentieth century.