Rhode Islanders with lung diseases can now get the latest in care right at home .
BY SARAH C . BALDWIN | PHOTOGRAPHY BY JESSICA SCRANTON
Rhode Islanders with lung diseases can now get the latest in care right at home .
Take A Breath
When she fainted , Jennifer M . was in the Ft . Lauderdale airport , traveling home to Queens , NY , from Costa Rica , where she had gone to mark the one-year anniversary of the death of her mother , who was buried there . She remembers telling an immigration officer that she was nervous about missing her connecting flight . Then — nothing . When she came to , in an ambulance , she felt so much better that she thought she was high .
“ This is heaven ,” Jennifer told the paramedic . “ What drug are you giving me ?” It was oxygen . The year before , in March 2015 , the otherwise healthy 40-year-old mother of three noticed that she was increasingly short of breath . Eventually she couldn ’ t walk a fraction of a city block or climb more than three steps in the subway without having to stop and rest . Suspecting heart disease , she consulted a cardiologist , who instead diagnosed her with pulmonary arterial hypertension , a rare , progressive disease in which the tiny arteries in the lung narrow and thicken , raising the blood pressure in the lungs and causing strain on the heart . By 2017 , Jennifer says , simply walking her son to school was “ torture .”
Jennifer is not alone . According to the American Lung Association , women between 30 and 60 years of age are more likely to suffer from PAH , which also disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic women .
“ With PAH you inhale as much you can , but it ’ s like your lungs are not taking in oxygen at all ,” Jennifer says . “ You feel like you have a plastic bag over your head . You wish you could just breathe through your skin .” When she decided to move the family to Rhode Island , where her partner had relocated for work , her cardiologist gave her the name of a doctor he knew there .
“ You ’ re going to be seen by the best of the best ,” he told her .
He was referring to Corey E . Ventetuolo , MD , MS , an associate professor of medicine at The Warren Alpert Medical School and a pulmonary and critical care physician specializing in PAH . Ventetuolo took Jennifer on as a patient and has been treating her ever since . When Jennifer ’ s condition continued to worsen , Ventetuolo was able to enroll her in a clinical trial of the drug sotatercept-csrk , a first-inclass molecule that directly targets the disease ’ s major biologic pathway . The drug is administered by injection
WINTER 2025 l HEALTH DISCOVERIES @ BROWN 11