Critical COPD respiratory illness is linked to increased transcriptomic activity of neutrophil proteases genes.

Background: Gene expression profiling (GEP) in cells obtained from peripheral blood has shown that this is a very useful approach for biomarker discovery and for studying molecular pathogenesis of prevalent diseases. While there is limited literature available on gene expression markers associated with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), the transcriptomic picture associated with critical respiratory illness in this disease is not known at the present moment.

Findings: By using Agilent microarray chips, we have profiled gene expression signatures in the whole blood of 28 COPD patients hospitalized with different degrees of respiratory compromise.

Viral infection is associated with an increased proinflammatory response in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

The development of new diagnostic methods based on molecular biology has led to evidence of the important role of respiratory viruses in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) exacerbations. Cytokines and chemokines are recognized as key actors in the pathogenesis of COPD. The objective of this study was to evaluate the association between viral infection and host cytokine responses in 57 COPD patients hospitalized with an acute exacerbation.