Frailty and Exacerbation of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: Is There Any Association?

Purpose: This study investigated if individuals with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and frailty are more likely to have acute exacerbations of COPD or require hospitalization for exacerbation than those without frailty.

Patients And Methods: Data on 135 outpatients with stable COPD were analyzed with the Cox proportional hazards model to assess the risk of future events. The Kihon Checklist was administered at baseline to classify the participants as robust, pre-frail, or frail.

Comparison of Disease Severity Classifications of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease: GOLD vs. STAR in Clinical Practice.

Background: In chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), there are two known classifications for assessing what is called disease severity. One is the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) classification, which is based on the post-bronchodilator value of FEV (% reference). The other is the STaging of Airflow obstruction by Ratio (STAR), with four grades of severity in subjects with an FEV/FVC ratio <0.

Is Frailty a Mortality Predictor in Subjects with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease?

Background: Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) has been frequently associated with frailty. The association between frailty and mortality in patients with COPD has not yet been fully elucidated and it remains controversial whether frailty or airflow limitation is more important in predicting mortality.

Methods: A total of 141 subjects with stable COPD completed pulmonary function tests and the Kihon Checklist at baseline between 2015 and 2022 and were followed for a maximum of 95 months.

The Conceptual Independence of Health Status, Respiratory Symptoms and Dyspnea in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in Real Clinical Practice.

The hypothesis that health status is the highest ranking concept, followed by respiratory symptoms and dyspnea as the lowest ranking concepts in subjects with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) was tested in a real clinical setting with 157 subjects with stable COPD. Spearman's rank correlation coefficients for scores of health status using the COPD Assessment Test (CAT), respiratory symptoms using the COPD Evaluating Respiratory Symptoms (E-RS) and dyspnea using Dyspnea-12 (D-12) between any two were 0.6 to 0.

Comparison of Predictive Properties between Tools of Patient-Reported Outcomes: Risk Prediction for Three Future Events in Subjects with COPD.

Background: Patient-reported outcome (PRO) measures must be evaluated for their discriminatory, evaluative, and predictive properties. However, the predictive capability remains unclear. We aimed to examine the predictive properties of several PRO measures of all-cause mortality, acute exacerbation of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and associated hospitalization.

Are Fatigue and Pain Overlooked in Subjects with Stable Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease?

Although there have been many published reports on fatigue and pain in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), it is considered that these symptoms are seldom, if ever, asked about during consultations in Japanese clinical practice. To bridge this gap between the literature and daily clinical experience, the authors attempted to gain a better understanding of fatigue and pain in Japanese subjects with COPD. The Brief Fatigue Inventory (BFI) to analyse and quantify the degree of fatigue, the revised Short-Form McGill Pain Questionnaire 2 (SF-MPQ-2) for measuring pain and the Kihon Checklist to judge whether a participant is frail and elderly were administered to 89 subjects with stable COPD.

Comparison between tools for measuring breathlessness: Cross-sectional validation of the Japanese version of the Dyspnoea-12.

Introduction: The Dyspnoea-12 (D-12) is a brief, easy to complete questionnaire for measuring breathlessness.

Objectives: To facilitate further efforts to measure dyspnoea in real clinical settings, the authors aimed to develop and validate a Japanese version of the D-12 and also compare the D-12 with the Baseline Dyspnea Index (BDI) and the Activity component of the St. George's Respiratory Questionnaire (SGRQ).

Is Blood Eosinophil Count a Biomarker for Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in a Real-World Clinical Setting? Predictive Property and Longitudinal Stability in Japanese Patients.

The authors examined predictive properties and the longitudinal stability of blood eosinophil count (BEC) or three strata (<100 cells/mm, 100-299 cells/mm and ≥300 cells/mm) in patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) for up to six and a half years as part of a hospital-based cohort study. Of the 135 patients enrolled, 21 (15.6%) were confirmed to have died during the follow-up period.

Development of spray-freeze-dried siRNA/PEI powder for inhalation with high aerosol performance and strong pulmonary gene silencing activity.

In the present study, a novel dry small interfering RNA (siRNA) powder for inhalation, containing polyethyleneimine (PEI) as a delivery vector, was produced by spray freeze drying (SFD). The powder had spherical and highly porous structure of approximately 10 μm in diameter with high aerosol performance for emission and lung delivery. The reconstituted siRNA/PEI complex after dissolution of the powder had almost the same physicochemical properties and in vitro gene silencing activity as the original one constituted in the sample solution before SFD, showing that the integrity of the siRNA was maintained.