Kyoto, Japan -- Pulmonary arterial hypertension, or PAH, is a rare and severe disease characterized by elevated blood pressure in the pulmonary arteries, which transport blood from the heart to the lungs. This can eventually lead to right heart failure, when the heart's right ventricle becomes too weak to pump sufficient blood through the lungs and to the rest of the body.

Current treatments for PAH have improved the outcome for patients, but the prognosis for this disease is still poor and some patients end up needing lung transplants. C-type natriuretic peptide, or CNP, is a hormone involved in the regulation of vascular function, and a team of researchers at Kyoto University and collaborating institutions wondered whether it might also have therapeutic potential in PAH.

"CNP has been studied mainly in cardiovascular biology, but we wondered whether it might also play an important protective role in pulmonary vascular disease," says first author Hiromu Yanagisawa. The role of this hormone and its receptor GC-B in the pulmonary vasculature and the development of PAH has remained unclear, so the team was motivated to investigate.

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