Beschreibung: Sustained therapeutic hypercapnia prevents pulmonary hypertension in experimental animals, but its rescue effects on established disease have not been studied. Therapies that inhibit Rho-kinase (ROCK) and/or augment nitric oxide (NO)-cyclic guanosine monophosphate (cGMP) signaling can reverse or prevent progression of chronic pulmonary hypertension. Our objective in the present study was to determine whether sustained rescue treatment with inhaled CO 2 (therapeutic hypercapnia) would improve structural and functional changes of chronic hypoxic pulmonary hypertension. Spontaneously breathing pups were exposed to normoxia (21% O 2 ) or hypoxia (13% O 2 ) from postnatal days 1–21 with or without 7% CO 2 (Pa CO 2 elevated by ~25 mmHg) or 10% CO 2 (Pa CO 2 elevated by ~40 mmHg) from days 14 to 21 . Compared with hypoxia alone, animals exposed to hypoxia and 10% CO 2 had significantly ( P 〈 0.05) decreased pulmonary vascular resistance, right-ventricular systolic pressure, right-ventricular hypertrophy, and medial wall thickness of pulmonary resistance arteries as well as decreased lung phosphodiesterase (PDE) V, RhoA, and ROCK activity. Rescue treatment with 10% CO 2 , or treatment with a ROCK inhibitor (15 mg/kg ip Y-27632 twice daily from days 14 to 21 ), also increased pulmonary arterial endothelial nitric oxide synthase and lung NO content. In contrast, cGMP content and cGMP-dependent protein kinase (PKG) activity were increased by exposure to 10% CO 2 , but not by ROCK inhibition with Y-27632. In vitro exposure of pulmonary artery smooth muscle cells to hypercapnia suppressed serum-induced ROCK activity, which was prevented by inhibition of PKG with Rp-8-Br-PET-cGMPS. We conclude that sustained hypercapnia dose-dependently inhibited ROCK activity, augmented NO-cGMP-PKG signaling, and led to partial improvements in the hemodynamic and structural abnormalities of chronic hypoxic PHT in juvenile rats. Increased PKG content and activity appears to play a major upstream role in CO 2 -induced suppression of ROCK activity in pulmonary arterial smooth muscle.