Mitochondrial Haplogroups and Risk of Pulmonary Arterial Hypertension

Pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) is a serious and often fatal disease. It is a panvasculopathy of the pulmonary microcirculation characterized by vasoconstriction and arterial obstruction due to vascular proliferation and remodeling and ultimately right ventricular failure. Mitochondrial dysfunction is a universal finding in pulmonary vascular cells of patients with PAH, and is mechanistically linked to disease origins in animal models of pulmonary hypertension. Mitochondria have their own circular DNA (mtDNA), which can be subgrouped into polymorphic haplogroup variants, some of which have been identified as at-risk or protective from cardiovascular and/or neurodegenerative diseases. Here, we hypothesized that mitochondrial haplogroups may be associated with PAH. To test this, mitochondrial haplogroups were determined in a cohort of PAH patients and controls [N = 204 Caucasians (125 PAH and 79 controls) and N = 46 African Americans (13 PAH and 33 controls)]. Haplogroup L was associated with a lower rate of PAH as compared to macrohaplogroups N and M. When haplogroups were nested based on ancestral inheritance and controlled for age, gender and race, haplogroups M and HV, JT and UK of the N macro-haplogroup had significantly higher rates of PAH compared to the ancestral L (L0/1/2 and L3) (all p ≤ 0.05). Overall, the findings suggest that mitochondrial haplogroups influence risk of PAH and that a vulnerability to PAH may have emerged under the selective enrichment of specific haplogroups that occurred with the migration of populations out of Africa.