UCLA

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a chronic pulmonary vascular disease characterized by increased pulmonary vascular resistance. Recent studies implicate sympathetic overactivation in PAH and demonstrate that PAH patient suffer from cognitive impairments, depression, anxiety, and decreased quality of life which indicate severe neuropathology. Neuropathology of PAH remains understudied yet may produce additional insights into the pathogenesis of this devastating disease. Thus, we compared a clinically relevant rat model of experimental pulmonary hypertension (PH) with available post-mortem human data using histological methods to study changes associated with PAH in the brain. We found in rats and humans that PAH is associated with vascular wall thickening of brain parenchymal arterioles and gliosis with non-ischemic pathology. Furthermore, we found evidence for neuroinflammation surrounding brain parenchymal arterioles in experimental PH rats.