FLT1 and acute respiratory distress syndrome: Additionally, Hernandez-Pacheco and colleagues performed an integrative multiomics analysis with data from rat models and ICU patients and identified a variant in the gene encoding the main VEGF receptor (FLT1) as a novel ARDS risk factor [41], suggesting that altered levels of this receptor could contribute to protection from lung injury, reducing the activity of VEGF and the vascular permeability in patients with ARDS [41,52].