COPD Case Study

ut how they do a study on COPD patients ( chronic obstructive pulmonary disease ) which are patients who have a lung disease characterized by chronic obstruction of airflow that interferes with normal breathing and is not fully reversible. Their objective was to use an unsupervised method to analyze the proteomic profile ( the large-scale study of proteins ) of peripheral neutrophils of stable COPD patients and healthy aged matched controls to find differences in the profiles . The researchers performed fluorescence ( emit visible light when they irradiated with ultraviolet rays or with violet-blue visible light ) two-dimensional difference gel-electrophoresis ( process in which molecules such as proteins , DNA , or RNA fragments can be separated

according to size and electrical charge by applying an electric current to them while they are in a gel ) with undergo of peripheral neutrophils of stable COPD patients and controls . Their results when they identified the two groups based on the differentially regulated proteins and hierarchical clustering was that there was no difference in lung function between the two different groups .

Although the neutrophils from one of the COPD groups was less responsive to bacterial peptide . This shows that systemic inflammatory signals do not necessarily correspond with the GOLD classification and that inflammatory phenotyping can remarkably add in enhanced diagnosis of single COPD patients . The background is that COPD as i stated earlier is characterized by irreversible airflow limitation , and is a leading cause of mortality and morbidity . Cigarettes as stated in the article is the most important risk factor for the development of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in the western world . According to GOLD the diagnosis and severity of COPD is assessed using lung function measurements , like FEV1 , FVC . It is well received that these spirometry measurements are insufficient , mainly because spirometry data alone poorly correlate with symptoms and health status . A lot of studies have focused on the identification of disease phenotype in COPD , and have also searched for individual and/or combined biomarkers using the data they collected

. They couldn’t do invasive procedures , because they are difficult to do regularly on COPD patients . There is an unmet clinical need for objective disease markers identifying COPD phenotype that can be obtained with non-invasive methods . The airflow limitation in COPD is usually progressive and is related with an abnormal inflammatory response in the lungs . The inflammation in the lungs is characterized by a buildup of neutrophils , macrophages and lymphocytes .