Living with pulmonary arterial hypertension is challenging, but the chore of treating the rare heart disease may change following promising clinical trial data to be published in the Dec. 24 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine. Data from the largest study ever of pulmonary hypertension shows the oral medication Selexipag led to a 40 percent reduction in hospitalizations and worsening symptoms among patients with pulmonary hypertension.
Selexipag targets a well-known disease pathway that opens blood vessels to the lungs and improves heart function and is easier to use than PH treatments delivered with infusions or injections. "For more than two decades we've targeted the prostacyclin pathway to induce vasodilation in these blood vessels in the lung," says senior study author Vallerie McLaughlin, M.D., director of the University of Michigan Pulmonary Hypertension Program. "But…
