Pulmonary Hypertension

Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a hemodynamic and pathophysiologic state that can be found in multiple conditions with associated symptoms of dyspnea, decreased exercise tolerance, and progression to right heart failure. The World Health Organization has classified PH into five groups. The first group is pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), which can be idiopathic, heritable, due to drugs and toxins, or associated with conditions such as connective tissue diseases, congenital heart disease, portal hypertension, and others...

BACKGROUND: Riociguat, a member of a new class of compounds (soluble guanylate cyclase stimulators), has been shown in previous clinical studies to be beneficial in the treatment of chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension. METHODS: In this phase 3, multicenter, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study, we randomly assigned 261 patients with inoperable chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension or persistent or recurrent pulmonary hypertension after pulmonary endarterectomy to receive placebo or riociguat...

RATIONALE: Exercise tolerance is decreased in patients with pulmonary hypertension (PH). It is unknown whether exercise intolerance in PH coincides with an impaired rest-to-exercise response in right ventricular (RV) contractility. OBJECTIVES: To investigate in patients with PH the RV exertional contractile reserve, defined as the rest-to-exercise response in end-systolic elastance (ΔEes), and the effects of exercise on the matching of Ees and RV afterload (Ea) (i...

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BACKGROUND: The use of oral anticoagulation in patients with heart failure in sinus rhythm remains controversial as previous large randomized controlled trials (RCTs) have not shown a survival benefit. However, heterogeneity exists among heart failure patients and it is possible that high-risk subgroups may benefit from anticoagulation (warfarin). We hypothesize that one such subgroup are patients with heart failure and pulmonary hypertension (PH), conditions associated with coagulation abnormalities...

INTRODUCTION: Pulmonary hypertension (PH) has been identified either as a symptom or a primary entity. Several drugs are already on the market and other are being investigated. Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is also a disease were several drugs are being investigated. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Three jet nebulizers and three ultrasound nebulizers were used for our experiments with seven different residual cups and four different loadings. Bonsetan, treprostinil, sidenafil and pirfenidone were modified in order to be produced as aerosol in an effort to identify parameters which influence the droplet size production size...

BACKGROUND: Heterogeneity in response to treatment of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a major challenge to improving outcome in this disease. Although vasodilator-responsive PAH (VR-PAH) accounts for a minority of cases, VR-PAH has a pronounced response to calcium channel blockers and better survival than vasodilator-nonresponsive PAH (VN-PAH). We hypothesized that VR-PAH has a different molecular cause from VN-PAH that can be detected in the peripheral blood. METHODS AND RESULTS: Microarrays of cultured lymphocytes from VR-PAH and VN-PAH patients followed at Vanderbilt University were performed with quantitative polymerase chain reaction performed on peripheral blood for the 25 most different genes...