Jiapeng Huang
Investigators plan to recruit 50 PAH patients from UofL PAH Clinic, with various degrees of severity (25 intermediate risk patients and 20 high risk patients) and 10 age and gender matched controls. PAH patients are evaluated at least every 6 months by the PAH Clinic and blood/urine samples will be obtained at each office visit. Blood, plasma and urine samples will be used to measure 31 metal levels including heavy metals (cadmium, arsenic, cobalt, lead etc.) and essential metals (calcium, copper, iron, zinc, potassium etc.) by the with ICP-MS via the service of ITEMFC. Interactions among the 31 metals in PAH patients, metal concentration differences between intermediate risk PAH, high risk PAH and control groups, the correlation between metal concentrations and the etiology, severity, duration, treatment, and progression of PAH/RV dysfunction over 12 months will be analyzed by CIEHS Biostatistics and Informatics Facility Core.
Exposures to heavy metals such arsenic, lead, cadmium have been linked to increased incidence of cardiovascular disease (CVD). However, current studies suffer from multiple drawbacks, most studies were cross sectional in design, focused on individual metals without consideration of the joint effects of multiple metals, and did not examine the possible effects of essential metals in CVD. Especially, the relationship between heavy metals/essential metal dyshomeostasis and right ventricular (RV) dysfunction/pulmonary hypertension (PAH), is less investigated. Investigators hypothesize that increas…
Inclusion Criteria: * All patients with the diagnosis of pulmonary hypertension * Agree to the study protocol * Healthy volunteers * Age, gender matched controls Exclusion Criteria: * Younger than 18 years * Refusal to participate
Measure multiple metal levels
Arctuva estimate
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