Overview
- A multimodal study published Aug. 24 examined 48 patients with pulmonary-hypertension–complicated HFpEF using invasive hemodynamics, cardiac MRI, and heart tissue biopsies to probe disease drivers.
- The authors found that right-ventricle dysfunction more reliably predicted death and hospital readmission than conventional HFpEF severity measures.
- Tissue analysis and long-read RNA sequencing revealed signs of mitochondrial dysfunction and altered RNA metabolism in patients with RV failure, with the gene variant GATD3 singled out as a candidate link to impaired energy production.
- The new molecular findings help explain why prior trials of pulmonary-hypertension drugs such as sildenafil and oral levosimendan repeatedly failed by treating a heterogeneous patient group with a single approach.
- Investigators propose a precision-medicine pipeline that would analyze heart tissue to define a patient’s dominant mechanism and then enroll them in targeted trials, with larger, less-invasive studies needed before clinical use.