Gene expression profiling of pulmonary arterial hypertension

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is the best characterized and most studied type of pulmonary hypertension, classified as Group I according to the international guidelines, and hemodinamically defined as pre-capillary pulmonary hypertension. Our analysis was focused on the role of the osteopontin gene in the transcriptional profile of PAH. We used microarray to identifiy the gene expression profiles in patients with PAH and in normal controls. Fresh frozen lung samples were obtained from the recipients organs of 15 patients with PAH and 11 normal controls (normal lung tissue obtained from tissue flanking lung cancer resections). The PAH group included 6 patients with idiopathic PAH, 4 patients with PAH secondary to connective tissue disease (CTD), 4 patients with PAH secondary to congenital heart disease (CHD) and 1 patient with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH). RNA was extracted and hybridized on Affymetrix microarrays.