Patients with pulmonary hypertension are classified according to clinical criteria to inform treatment decisions. Knowledge of the molecular drivers of pulmonary hypertension might better inform treatment choice, say researchers involved in a study published in May in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. The researchers studied blood samples from 470 people who already had been diagnosed with pulmonary hypertension to see if they could find different patterns of proteins in their blood. They also tested blood from healthy people and people with other diseases for comparison (control group).
Instead of using the usual way doctors classify pulmonary hypertension patients, the researchers discovered 4 new groups based on protein patterns in the blood.
This discovery might help doctors:
- Predict which patients will do better or worse
- Choose the right treatments for each patient based on their blood protein pattern
- Develop new targeted medicines for each group
These blood protein patterns could serve as “theragnostic biomarkers” – meaning they could both predict outcomes and guide which new treatments targeting PDGF and TGF-β pathways would work best for each patient.
Read more at this link on the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine.
Citation
Athénaïs Boucly, Shanshan Song, Merve Keles, Dennis Wang, Luke S. Howard, Marc Humbert, Olivier Sitbon, Allan Lawrie, A. A. Roger Thompson, Philipp Frank, Mika Kivimaki, Christopher J. Rhodes, and Martin R Wilkins, American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, May 9, 2025, https://www.atsjournals.org/doi/suppl/10.1164/rccm.202408-1574OC/suppl_file/disclosures.pdf
