Pulmonary vascular involvement in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

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Abstract
Chronic obstructive lung disease affects the entire lung, not just the airways. Although pulmonary hypertension (PH) has long been recognised in a subset of patients with COLD, the important pathophysiological questions remain unanswered. Oxygen supplementation, however, has been shown to blunt the exercise-induced PH in these patients. Hypercoagulability has also been described in patients with COLD. This may, in part, be due to the inflammatory aspects of COLD exacerbation events. In addition to perivascular inflammation, the pathology of vessels in COLD includes intimal thickening, muscularisation of arterioles, in situ thrombosis, loss of capillaries and precapillary arterioles, and vascular congestion and stasis. Recent work describes apoptosis of septal endothelial cells and decreased expression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) and one of its receptors, VEGFRII, in lungs from patients with emphysema. Based on this work, a rat model was developed that shows chronic blockade of VEGF receptors leads to septal cell apoptosis and results in emphysema and PH. This animal model has led to prevention trials using 1) a broad-spectrum caspase inhibitor, 2) a superoxide dismutase mimetic, and 3) α1‐antitrypsin.

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