Metabolic stress, chronic vascular injury and cellular apoptosis are considered as instrumentally connected in the pathogenesis of atherosclerosis and diabetes (Gistera and Hansson, 2017). The work from Mattisson et al. (Mattisson et al., 2017) sheds light on this potentially important pathway linking cell-mediated death and cardiovascular outcomes. The study spans translational science, from describing an elegant laboratory technique using Fas ligand to induce apoptosis in peripheral blood mononuclear cells and demonstrating release of TNF receptor 1 (TNFR-1), TNF-related apoptosis-inducing ligand receptor 2 (TRAILR-2) and Fas, to studying the cell death receptor plasma levels in a large well-characterized prospective population.