Mice aged 4–5 weeks old were i.p. injected with 250 μg of LCWE (total rhamnose amount as determined above) or PBS. Mice were sacrificed and hearts were removed at day 7 or 14 and embedded in OCT compound for histological examination. Following a cut through the aortic root, coronary artery lesions, aortic root vasculitic lesions (aortitis) and myocardial inflammation were identified in serial sections (7 μm) stained with hematoxylin and eosin or elastin/collagen staining. Only sections that showed the 2nd coronary artery branch separating from aorta were analyzed. Histopathological examination and inflammation severity scoring of the coronary arteritis, aortic root vasculitis and myocarditis was performed by a coronary pathologist who was blinded to the genotypes or experimental groups (MF). KD lesions were assessed using the following scoring system: Score 0 = no inflammation, 1 = rare inflammatory cells, 2 = scattered inflammatory cells, 3 = diffuse infiltrate of inflammatory cells, 4 = dense clusters of inflammatory cells. Multi-nuclear cells were indicative of acute inflammation while mono-nuclear cells reflected chronic inflammation. Aortic root was evaluated for severity of aortitis, and cross sections of coronary artery for severity of coronary artery inflammation and combined the two scores to generate a severity score that we called “vessel inflammation score”. Myocardial inflammation score was described as follows; score 0 = no myocardial fibrosis, 1 = very minimal focal subepicardial interstitial fibrosis just infiltrating beneath epicardial fat, 2 = mild subepicardial interstitial fibrosis infiltrating deeper into subepicardial myocardium, 3 = multifocal subepicardial interstitial fibrosis, 4 = replacement fibrosis.Incidence rate was evaluated by the presence of any coronary, aortic or myocardial inflammation score of equal or greater to 1.