Carotid artery intimal medial thickness (IMT) is a measure of atherosclerosis that is independently associated with traditional atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease risk factors (Crouse et al., 1996; Espeland et al., 1999) and coronary atherosclerotic burden (Davis et al., 1999). Fox et al. (2003) showed that 35 to 45% of the variability in multivariable-adjusted carotid IMT is explained by genetic factors. [from
OMIM]