From the Andes to the Rocky Mountains: A Historical View of High-Altitude Pulmonary Hypertension

The current understanding of high-altitude pulmonary hypertension (HAPH) is largely attributable to the work of a small cadre of international scientists. The present article discusses the discovery and early investigations into HAPH that now serve as the foundation of our modern understanding of the disease. Further, though HAPH is clearly a distinct entity, we highlight how this early work led to a broader understanding of pulmonary vascular disease—including pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH)—through the development of translational clinical models of disease, elucidation of hypoxic signaling, and therapeutics applicable to PAH.