Group 5 Pulmonary Hypertension

The most common causes include:

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Blood-related disorders

Some blood-related disorders can cause pulmonary hypertension, including:

• Polycythemia vera (when your bone marrow makes too many red blood cells)

• Essential thrombocythemia (when your bone marrow makes too many platelets)

• Sickle cell anemia (when red blood cells are sticky and misshapen)

• Chronic hemolytic anemia, also called thalassemia (when blood cells die off faster than they can be replaced)

• Splenectomy (spleen removal).

 

Systemic disorders

Systemic disorders that involve the lungs can cause pulmonary hypertension, including:

• Sarcoidosis, (a complex immune disease that can result in inflammation, scarring, and  damage to tissues in the lungs and blood vessels)

• Lymphangioleiomyomatosis (when too much smooth muscle growth causes cysts in the lungs)

 

Kidney disease

A significant proportion of people with chronic kidney disease develop pulmonary hypertension.

 

Certain metabolic disorders

Examples include:

• Glycogen storage disease (when the body has difficulty breaking down certain sugars)

• Thyroid disease

• Gaucher disease (a genetic disorder in which fat cells build up in certain organs)

 

Cancers

Some cancers can cause pulmonary hypertension, if tumours press on the pulmonary arteries.

 

Other rare diseases

Other rare diseases, including mediastinal fibrosis (a disease resulting in progressive scarring of the tissues in the area between the lungs and the chest wall), can cause pulmonary hypertension.