The role and mechanism of NDST1/NULP1 regulating right ventricular hypertrophy in hypoxic pulmonary hypertension.

Hypoxia leads to hypoxic pulmonary hypertension (HPH), causing right ventricular hypertrophy (RVH). RVH becomes a significant and nonnegligible public health issue in the world. In our study, we successfully established the HPH rat model and found that RVH happened in HPH, and then we observed an increased inflammation response in the heart tissue of HPH-induced RVH rats. Moreover, increased N-deacetylase-N-sulfotransferase-1 (NDST1) and decreased nuclear localized protein 1 (NULP1) were found in the heart tissue of HPH-induced RVH rats. An in vitro cell experiment showed that inhibition of NDST1 expression enhanced cell viability, reduced cell apoptosis, alleviated cardiomyocyte hypertrophy, decreased inflammation and increased phosphorylated AKT level, however, over-expression of NDST1 had opposite effects on these aspects. NULP1 reversed the effects of NDST1 on these regulations. Finally, we found that up-regulated NDST1 reduced NULP1 expression and down-regulated NDST1 increased NULP1 expression. Our study confirmed that inhibition of the NDST1/NULP1 pathway might contribute to the attenuation of HPH-induced RVH, and the mechanism may be related to the reduction of inflammation, cardiomyocyte apoptosis, and AKT phosphorylation.