Pulmonary vascular collagen content, not cross-linking, contributes to right ventricular pulsatile afterload and overload in early pulmonary hypertension.

Abstract

The present study found an important role for collagen content, but not collagen cross-linking, in the pulsatile right ventricular (RV) afterload, which is correlated with RV hypertrophy. These results uncover a new collagen-mediated mechanical mechanism of RV dysfunction in early pulmonary hypertension progression. Furthermore, our results suggest that measures and metrics of pulsatile hemodynamics such as pulse pressure and pulse wave velocity are potentially important to cardiovascular mortality in patients with pulmonary hypertension.