Scientists have identified a protein which could be used as a new treatment for adult pulmonary hypertension.
Dr Yunchao Su, a pharmacologist and his team at Georgia Health Sciences University, published the study in Journal of Clinical Investigation, identifying the protein.
Calpain is a protein which is crucial to development, but it has been found to enable narrow, scarred blood vessels and pulmonary hypertension, which often occurs as a result of smoking or air pollution.
Pulmonary hypertension is a progressive and fatal condition that children can be born with, but which also appears in adults with chronic obstructive lung disease, or COPD, primarily caused by smoking or air pollutants, including second-hand smoke.
When the team blocked or removed calpain, TGFbeta was not activated and vascular remodelling and scarring as well as the heart damage were prevented, removing the need for heart-lung transplants.
"The pulmonary process was close to normal," Dr Su said.
He added that while a calpain inhibitor is not an option for children, an inhaled version could be a possibility for adults.
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