Why the study?
Little is known about how the mechanical properties of pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cells are altered under drug supplementation with clinically used pulmonary vasodilators.
Do pulmonary vasodilators (sildenafil, macitentan, riociguat) reduce the cellular stiffness of pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cells derived from a patient with idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension?
Do pulmonary vasodilators (sildenafil, macitentan, riociguat) reduce the cellular stiffness of pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cells derived from a patient with idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension?
Pulmonary vasodilators (sildenafil, macitentan, riociguat) directly reduce the cellular stiffness of pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cells from an IPAH patient, with combination therapy showing additive effects.
Background: Idiopathic pulmonary arterial hypertension (IPAH) is a progressive disease caused by vascular remodeling of the pulmonary arteries with elevated pulmonary vascular resistance. Recently, various pulmonary vasodilator drugs have become available in the clinical field, and have dramatically ameliorated the prognosis of IPAH. However, little is known about how the mechanical properties of pulmonary arterial smooth muscle cells (PASMCs) are altered under drug supplementation. Methods: Atomic force microscopy (AFM) was used to investigate the mechanical properties of PASMCs derived from a patient with IPAH (PAH-PASMCs) and a healthy control (N-PASMCs) which received the supplementation of clinically used drugs for IPAH: sildenafil, macitentan, and riociguat. Results: PASMCs derived from PAH-PASMCs were stiffer than those derived from N-PASMCs. With sildenafil treatment, the apparent Young’s modulus ( E 0 ) of cells significantly decreased in PAH-PASMCs but remained unchanged in N-PASMCs. The decrease in E 0 of PAH-PASMCs was also observed in macitentan and riociguat treatment. The stress relaxation AFM revealed that the decrease in E 0 of PAH-PASMCs resulted from a decrease in the cell elastic modulus and/or increase in cell fluidity. The combination treatment of macitentan and riociguat showed an additive effect on cell mechanical properties, implying that this clinically accepted combination therapy for IPAH influences the intracellular mechanical components. Conclusions: Pulmonary vasodilator drugs affect the mechanical properties of PAH-PASMCs, and there exists a mechanical effect of combination treatment on PAH-PASMCs. Cardiol Res. 2021;12(4):231-237 doi: https://doi.org/10.14740/cr1282
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Katsuragi et al. (2021) studied this question.
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