There is now solid evidence that T cell adaptive immunity is involved in atherogenesis.
While initial studies have focused on the pathogenic arm of the immune response, more
recent work clearly suggests an important role for several subsets of regulatory T cells in the
protection against lesion development. Here, we review the current knowledge on the role of
both pathogenic and regulatory adaptive T cell immunity in atherosclerosis, generated
mainly from the study of mouse models of the disease.