Margarida Maia, PhD, science writer —

A slit lamp exam of the eyes may detect signs that could help doctors predict how well treatment will work in people with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) associated with systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), an autoimmune disease, a small study suggests. Specific eye signs can also help evaluate PAH progression…

Children with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) who are started on treprostinil under the skin, or subcutaneously, at a younger age may be more likely to have better outcomes in the five years ahead, a study suggests. Starting before age 6, but not having an early response to treatment or…

Deaths around the world due to pulmonary hypertension (PH) have fallen over the past two decades, according to a new study, but 13 of the 54 countries included in the review actually saw their death rates rise. Worldwide, deaths from PH fell at an average rate of 3.2% each…

The hormone vasopressin may help improve oxygen levels and blood flow in newborns with acute pulmonary hypertension who fail to respond to treatment with inhaled nitric oxide, a study suggests. About two-thirds of newborns treated with vasopressin in the study, however, developed hyponatremia (a low level of sodium in…

A Phase 3 trial of an oral formulation of levosimendan, dubbed TNX-103, in people with pulmonary hypertension and heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (PH-HFpEF), has enrolled the first participant. LEVEL (NCT05983250) is recruiting up to 152 adults with PH-HFpEF, ages 18-85,…

Two genes were identified as potential drivers of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) in a bioinformatics study, offering opportunities to better understand the disease and explore their use as biomarkers or therapeutic targets. The genes, called WDR43 and GNL2, were more active in the lungs of people with PAH than…

The first participant has entered ASCENT, a clinical study into the safety and tolerability of Liquidia’s Yutrepia, an inhaled dry powder formulation of treprostinil that is under regulatory review for pulmonary hypertension associated with interstitial lung disease (PH-ILD). The open-label study (NCT06129240) seeks to enroll an estimated…

Delays beyond one year in the diagnosis of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) lead to more hospitalizations, and this translates into higher healthcare costs per patient each month in the U.S., a real-world study found. Indeed, such extra costs per month were estimated at nearly $4,000 per patient after 12…

Babies with persistent pulmonary hypertension of the newborn (PPHN) started quickly on treatment with prostaglandin E1 (PGE1) — which lowers blood pressure by allowing blood vessels to relax and open up — show a better working heart and a lesser need of extra oxygen, a study reports. “Importantly, the…

People with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) who have problems breathing while they’re sleeping — causing nocturnal hypoxemia, or oxygen levels in the blood to drop during the night — are nearly twice as likely as patients without such difficulty to experience clinical worsening, a study found. “The rate of…

The CorVista System, a point of care device that applies a machine learning algorithm to decode data, can predict the presence of pulmonary hypertension in patients with new-onset symptoms of cardiovascular disease, a study shows. The device’s algorithm performed about as well as transthoracic echocardiography, or TTE, a standard…

A heart transplant may resolve the pulmonary hypertension (PH) often found in children with heart failure — the organ’s inability to pump enough blood to meet the body’s needs, a small study found. After the transplant, however, it took longer for blood pressure to normalize in children with congenital…