Editorial on the Research Topic Targeting innate and adaptive immunity for improvement of cardiovascular diseaseAccording to the WHO's Global Health Estimates 2019, the deleterious complications of cardiovascular disease, in particular ischemic heart disease and stroke, account for 27% of deaths worldwide, rendering it the single most detrimental disease globally.Extensive effort has been put into preventive interventions, such as anti-smoking campaigns, educational programs for dietary changes and exercise to improve overall cardiovascular health and prevent development of cardiovascular risk factors already in preschool students (Gupta and Wood, 2019;Santos-Beneit et al, 2022).Pharmacological interventions so far mainly focused on modulation of blood pressure, hyperlipidemia and glucose metabolism, as well as antithrombotic therapy, but further optimization has stalled (Arnett et al, 20192019;Fang et al, 2021).Atherosclerosis is the leading underlying pathology of cardiovascular disease, and shares many features with other chronic inflammatory conditions. The concept of bone marrow derived macrophages destabilizing atherosclerotic lesions has been widely accepted, and recent scientific findings have broadened our understanding on how every part of the immune system plays a role in vascular inflammation (Chinetti-Gbaguidi et al, 2015;Engelen et al, 2022) and how stressors such as perioperative inflammation impact on atherosclerosis (Janssen et al, 2015;Janssen et al, 2020).The CANTOS trial, published in 2017, was the first to prove that an antiinflammatory therapy by targeting interleukin-1β with a monoclonal antibody is sufficient to reduce recurrence of cardiovascular events (Ridker et al, 2017).