Studies on endothelin for clinical use

内皮素-1(ET-1)是一种来源于血管内皮细胞的生物活性多肽。尽管ET-1参与了包括心力衰竭、肺动脉高压、肾功能衰竭和肿瘤在内的多种疾病的病理生理过程，近年来在人类医学中得到了广泛的关注，但在兽医领域中尚未对ET-1的临床重要性进行详细研究。在这项研究中，我们探讨了使用ET-1作为一种新的临床标志物来诊断或评估犬心、肺和肿瘤疾病预后的可行性。患有心肺疾病、二尖瓣反流、三尖瓣反流和肺动脉高压的犬，与健康犬相比，血清ET-1水平显著升高。在患有血管肉瘤(一种起源于血管内皮细胞的肿瘤)的狗身上，观察到血清ET-1水平显著高于患有非肿瘤性疾病或血管肉瘤以外的肿瘤性疾病的狗。我们的观察表明，血清ET-1水平可能是这些疾病的一个新的临床标志物。

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.