Expert Insights: How Early Diagnosis of Pulmonary Hypertension Can Save Lives
Expert Insights: How Early Diagnosis of Pulmonary Hypertension Can Save Lives
Pulmonary hypertension is a lung and heart disease that can be deadly if untreated. The standard procedure to detect the disease is invasive and often done years too late. Researcher Dr. Ruslan Rafikov wants to change that with a simple blood test.
He works in the Division of Endocrinology at the University of Arizona College of Medicine – Tucson, where he is analyzing data from blood samples using a computer algorithm to detect the disease much earlier. This could cut down the diagnosis time from years to days, potentially saving lives.
Content
5.44 -> Pulmonary hypertension
is a silent killer.
8.38 -> It's increased blood pressure
in the pulmonary circulation.
12.22 -> But what's the problematic
was that that increased
16.18 -> blood pressure in the
pulmonary circulation result
19.36 -> in increased heart load on
the right side of the heart.
23.05 -> And people, eventually,
die from heart failure.
26.51 -> So my research focused on
the involvement of metabolism
31.36 -> in the disease.
32.689 -> What we're trying to
find it's a phenomenon
35.74 -> called metabolic reprogramming.
38.44 -> When cells are affected, they
produce different patterns
43.3 -> of metabolites.
44.17 -> This is actually base for
our diagnostic test, when
47.38 -> we see the different
patterns, which
49.45 -> we call disease fingerprint.
51.85 -> Many people, when they
experience chronic condition,
55.84 -> first come to the doctor with
very unspecific, non-specific
60.13 -> symptoms, very mild symptoms,
like fatigue, dizziness,
64.64 -> shortness of breath.
66.2 -> And doctor is usually puzzled
what to do with the symptoms.
70.15 -> And the current
landscape of diagnosis
73.87 -> takes years, from
first symptoms,
76.39 -> to understand what kind of
disease affect a person.
81.23 -> The final diagnosis for
pulmonary hypertension
84.97 -> is the cauterization
of right heart.
87.11 -> It's very invasive procedure,
and what we're trying to do
91.09 -> is a simple blood test.
92.74 -> So we hope that,
with our test, we
96.01 -> can shift this current
diagnosis landscape
99.94 -> to more early detection
when people are
103.63 -> more responsive to therapies.
106.28 -> And we're trying to shrink
this time of diagnosis
109.18 -> from two years - over two years,
actually - to several days.
114.07 -> So that will help to treat
disease earlier to help
118.03 -> patients survive this disease.
Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yF5XCPvgpsg