Early degenerative aortic stenosis lesions exhibit active inflammation, sharing some features with atherosclerosis but differing in mineralization and smooth muscle cell presence.
The early lesion of "degenerative" aortic stenosis is an active inflammatory process with some similarities (lipid deposition, macrophage and T-cell infiltration, and basement membrane disruption) and some dissimilarities (presence of prominent mineralization and small numbers of smooth muscle cells) to atherosclerosis.
Otto et al. (Mon,) studied this question.