Systemic White Blood Cell Count as a Biomarker for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Utility and Limitations

Systemic White Blood Cell Count as a Biomarker for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Utility and Limitations

Systemic White Blood Cell Count as a Biomarker Associated with Severity of Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease

BACKGROUND Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), is a chronic inflammatory disorder. We evaluated whether white blood cell (WBC) count, is associated with the severity of COPD, independent of other inflammatory conditions, such as metabolic syndrome. METHODS The WBC counts were compared between 1227 COPD patients and 8679 non-COPD adults older than 40. The relationships between the WB...

Blood fibrinogen as a biomarker of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

BACKGROUND Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a multicomponent condition that is characterised by airflow obstruction that is not fully reversible and is a major global cause of morbidity and mortality. The most widely used marker of disease severity and progression is FEV1. However, FEV1 correlates poorly with both symptoms and other measures of disease progression and thus there ...

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease A Systemic Disease

For the first time, the recently published American Thoracic Society/European Respiratory Society chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) guidelines explicitly recognize that “although chronic obstructive pulmonary disease . . . affects the lungs, it also produces significant systemic consequences” (1). This is somewhat surprising because we have implicitly known for many years that COPD i...

Ventilatory limitations in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a heterogeneous disorder characterized by dysfunction of the small and large airways, as well as by destruction of the lung parenchyma and vasculature, in highly variable combinations. Breathlessness and exercise intolerance are the most common symptoms in COPD and progress relentlessly as the disease advances. Exercise intolerance is multifactori...