The etiology of pulmonary vascular abnormalities in CDH is incompletely understood. Studies have demonstrated improvement in pulmonary vasculature with prenatal therapy in animal models. We hypothesize that prenatal sildenafil may attenuate defective pulmonary vascular development via modulation of vSMC phenotype from undifferentiated, proliferative phenotype to differentiated, contractile phenotype. We utilized the nitrofen model of CDH to examine the effect of IA sildenafil on pulmonary vSMC phenotype during lung development.
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