Hypoxia-induced pulmonary vascular remodeling: a model for what human disease?

Abstract

Exposure of most animals to low levels of environmental oxygen results in alveolar hypoxia and reliably causes chronic pulmonary hypertension and morphological alterations of the precapillary pulmonary vessels (1-4). Chronic hypoxic exposure of animals has been used for decades to induce pulmonary vascular remodeling and, more recently, to assess the roles in this process of lipid mediators (5), endothelin (6), serotonin (7), nitric oxide (NO) (8, 9), and prostacyclin (10), as well as VEGF and its receptors As one measure of the clinical importance of work in this system, trials are now ongoing to test endothelin receptor blockers in the treatment of severe pulmonary hypertension.