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Iloprost, a drug used regularly to treat high blood pressure in the lungs, significantly improves lung damage in former smokers. The researchers examined lung biopsies of 152 people who had smoked at least 20 pack-years—equivalent to 1-pack a day for 20 years—before & after 6 months of treatment w/either oral iloprost or placebo. None of the 82 current smokers in trial saw significant improvement in the signs of lung disease, but FORMER SMOKERS treated with iloprost showed SIGNIFCANT improvement. “These results are exciting because they show we can actually keep former smokers from developing lung cancer with a drug used...

WASHINGTON, Feb. 25 — High blood pressure in the lungs has been identified as a major risk factor for death in adults with sickle-cell disease, and all people with the disease should be screened for this complication, according to a study being published Thursday. Almost one-third of adult sickle-cell patients who were screened with a noninvasive ultrasound method were found to have moderate to severe pulmonary hypertension and high blood pressure in the lungs that had not previously been detected, the study found. The results from the tests confirm earlier suggestions from studies of patient records that pulmonary hypertension is...