Head T, et al. - In the Pathobiological Determinants of Atherosclerosis in Youth (PDAY) cohort, researchers sought individuals with advanced coronary artery lesions, and determined if risk factors could account for such rapid disease progression, or not. A total of 2,651 individuals, aged 15–34, who had died of non-cardiac death, recruited post mortem, were the participants. Analysis on tissues and other samples was carried out. Accelerated coronary atherosclerosis was detected in a group of ~13% of the PDAY population despite their young age. Findings revealed the contribution of a range of traditional risk factors to an individual's inclusion to the identified subgroup with accelerated atherosclerosis but an individual's lesion burden could not be predicted by these factors, with the exceptions of age. The need for the identification of novel risk factors was suggested by unattributed variances in observations.