Benjamin M Smith, Hussein Traboulsi, John H M Austin, Ani Manichaikul, Eric A Hoffman, Eugene R Bleecker, Wellington V Cardoso, Christopher Cooper, David J Couper, Stephen M Dashnaw, Jia Guo, MeiLan K Han, Nadia N Hansel, Emlyn W Hughes, David R Jacobs, Richard E Kanner, Joel D Kaufman, Eric Kleerup, Ching-Long Lin, Kiang Liu, Christian M Lo Cascio, Fernando J Martinez, Jennifer N Nguyen, Martin R Prince, Stephen Rennard, Stephen S Rich, Leora Simon, Yanping Sun, Karol E Watson, Prescott G Woodruff, Carolyn J Baglole, R Graham Barr
Susceptibility to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) beyond cigarette smoking is incompletely understood, although several genetic variants associated with COPD are known to regulate airway branch development. We demonstrate that in vivo central airway branch variants are present in 26.5% of the general population, are unchanged over 10 y, and exhibit strong familial aggregation. The most common airway branch variant is associated with COPD in two cohorts ( n = 5,054), with greater central airway bifurcation density, and with emphysema throughout the lung...
January 30, 2018: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America