News

Longer-term use of Ventavis (iloprost) as an add-on therapy significantly improved blood flow and lowered blood pressure in people with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), a small study in Japan reported. Findings support this inhaled therapy’s established benefits as a pulmonary vasodilator — a medicine that  widens, or dilate,…

The International Society for Heart and Lung Transplantation (ISHLT) has launched the ISHLT Foundation, a new organization that will serve as ISHLT’s charitable arm to fund research grants and awards to improve patient care for advanced heart and lung diseases, including pulmonary hypertension (PH). In PH, high…

Nearly a third of individuals with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) live with mental health disorders that impair their overall quality of life, a study in Germany has found. The significant impact of panic disorder, major depression, and other mental disorders on life quality suggests that adequate screening tools…

Infants born extremely premature — at 23 to 25 weeks of pregnancy — are at a high risk of developing pulmonary hypertension (PH) before they are 3 months old but can be helped with treatment, a recent study reported. Initial signs of disease, evident on echocardiographs in these infants,…

The Pulmonary Hypertension Association (PHA) will join more than 80 organizations around the world on May 5 to recognize World Pulmonary Hypertension (PH) Day. The event is intended to raise global awareness about PH, a rare, life-threatening disease that affects more than 75 million people worldwide and for which…

Maximum oxygen uptake measured during cardiopulmonary exercise testing (CPET) independently predicted long-term survival outcomes in people with pulmonary hypertension caused by left heart disease (PH-LHD), a study reported. Further studies with a larger number of these patients are needed to confirm the findings, the researchers noted. The study, “…

The European Commission is expected to propose a new governing framework for health data next month, called the European Health Data Space (EHDS), with the aim of connecting national health systems to facilitate secure and efficient transfer of data across systems in different European nations. The move is expected to…

Treatment with DehydraTECH-CBD, Lexaria Bioscience’s investigational cannabis-derived treatment for pulmonary hypertension (PH), led to reduced pulmonary artery pressure in healthy volunteers who were exposed to low oxygen levels — especially among male participants — in conditions that mimicked PH. This was according to data from the now-completed HYPER-H21-3…

Combining measures of symptom severity, physical function, and heart health can help predict survival outcomes in pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), according to a new study. The study, “Prognostic value of improvement endpoints in pulmonary arterial hypertension trials: A COMPERA analysis,” was published in The Journal of Heart and…

A receptor protein at the surface of lung vascular progenitor cells regulates the cells’ growth and maturation into smooth muscle cells, contributing to the vascular remodeling that characterizes pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH), a study shows. Suppressing this protein — called platelet-derived growth factor receptor alpha (PDGFR-alpha) — prevents these progenitor…

The National Organization for Rare Disorders (NORD) has updated its State Report Card to make it more digitally friendly and added telehealth to its categories of rare disease policy issues in a nod to its increased use during the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. NORD’s report card project began seven…

Breathing problems are more common in patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction who also have pulmonary hypertension (PH) than in those who do not have PH, a study reported. Patients with PH also had poorer lung function and long-term survival than those without PH. However, while spirometry…