Studies on endothelin for clinical use

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Endothelin-1(ET-1) is a bioactive peptide derived from vascular endothelial cells. Although ET-1 has recently received a lot of attention in human medicine because of its involvement in the pathophysiology of many diseases including heart failure, pulmonary hypertension, renal failure and tumors, no detailed studies on the clinical importance of ET-1 have been performed in veterinary medicine. In this study we investigated the feasibility of using ET-1 as a novel clinical marker to diagnose or assess the prognosis in canine cardiopulmonary and neoplastic disease. Dogs affected with cardiopulmonary disease, mitral valve regurgitation, tricuspid valve regurgitation and pulmonary hypertension, showed a significant increase in serum ET-1 levels compared to healthy dogs. In dogs presenting with hemangiosarcoma, a tumor that originates from vascular endothelial cells, significantly higher serum levels of ET-1 were observed than in dogs with non-neoplastic diseases or with neoplastic diseases other than hemangiosarcoma. Our observations suggest that serum ET-1 levels could be a novel clinical marker for these diseases.