Dietary Choices May Help To Treat Pulmonary Hypertension

According to the researchers' findings that are published in Cell Metabolism, they found that hypertensive pulmonary blood vessels are hungry, having a rather voracious appetite for two amino acids called glutamine and serine. As it turns out, with any unbalanced diet, there are consequences, and the metabolism of these two amino acids are a key driver of pulmonary hypertension disease progression. 

As the hungry vessels metabolize these two amino acids the process creates two new amino acids called proline and glycine which are the primary building blocks of collagen protein that makes up 30% of our body’s total protein and provides a structural framework for bones, muscles, skin, and connecting tissues. Unfortunately, the strong appetite and the resulting elevated levels of glutamine and proline in the hungry blood vessels drive the overproduction of collagen which leads to the vessel stiffening and impaired function which are the hallmark features of pulmonary hypertension. 

"For the first time, we have a dietary maneuver that may serve as an effective therapy for the disease," says Stephen Chan, who is the Vitalant Chair in Vascular Medicine and Professor of Medicine in the Division of Cardiology at the University of Pittsburgh, and also directs the Vascular Medicine Institute and Center for Pulmonary Vascular Biology and Medicine at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine and UPMC.

The researchers found that reducing the dietary intake of glutamine and serine-rich foods helped to reduce collagen overproduction and suggested that those with pulmonary hypertension should also avoid foods that are rich in serine and glutamine, or that eating foods in which these amino acids are depleted might help to boost the effectiveness of current medication. 

"It opens up a new way that we could treat this disease, because now -- instead of just relying on medications and transplantation -- there are possibly effective lifestyle interventions," says Chan.

To harness the characteristic appetite of these cells the researchers created a new diagnostic test for pulmonary hypertension using PET Scan technology and a glutamine imaging tracer that monitors where glutamine goes in the body like a GPS. They believe that this screening will help with early disease diagnosis and the implementation of both lifestyle and pharmacological interventions that will enable physicians to monitor the efficacy of the intervention being used in slowing disease progression.