This article originally appeared on Patient Daily.

A team at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) recently widened science’s grasp of reasons why HIV-infected patients are statistically up to twice as likely as others to suffer from heart attacks, strokes and other cardiovascular events.

Researchers discovered that immune cells called monocytes flourish in people with HIV, their “TF” proteins causing inflammation and atypical blood clotting even when patients were responding well to treatment. Using an experimental anticoagulant called Ixolaris, the NIH team observed the TF protein activity ceasing without impairing the monocyte cells.

Leading the crew were Dr. Irini Sereti, of NIH’s Laboratory of Immunoregulation at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), and Dr. Ivona Pandrea of the University of Pittsburgh. The study’s findings were published recently in Science Translational Medicine.

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