• Home
• GSK in focus
• COPD: beyond a 'smoker's cough'

COPD: beyond a 'smoker's cough'

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is preventable but not curable. With World COPD Day on 18 November 2009, what is this relatively unknown disease - and what treatments are available?

Apart from cancer, heart attack, AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis can you name a disease that kills, on average, one person every 10 seconds?

The answer is chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). It's not 'smoker's cough', as commonly thought, but rather an under-diagnosed, life-threatening lung disease.

Who does COPD affect?
It affects mostly people aged 40 and over. Many people have the disease but don’t know it. They may think that the common COPD symptoms such as coughing and breathlessness are a normal part of getting older - but this is not the case.

Deaths from COPD are on the increase
Somewhat surprisingly, although deaths from cardiovascular disease and cancer are decreasing, COPD is on the increase - something that has gone unnoticed until relatively recently.

COPD is largely preventable, but not curable. Appropriate management can control symptoms, slow disease progression and help people improve their quality of life. Treatment can help slow the progression of COPD, but it generally worsens over time. The most important risk factors for COPD include tobacco smoking, air pollution and occupational dust and chemicals such as fumes.

Symptoms of COPD
With COPD, breathlessness and a chronic cough make daily activities such as walking up a short flight of stairs difficult as the disease worsens. It used to be more common in men, but no longer.

The disease affects men and women almost equally because of increased use of tobacco by women in high-income countries and because of indoor air pollution from cooking and heating in low-income countries, according to the World Health Organization.

What causes COPD?
The most common cause is cigarette smoking. A much smaller percentage of patients have a genetic predisposition to the disease.

The disease has a number of different components causing limitations to airflow in the lungs and breathing difficulties. These include increased inflammation in the airways, direct damage resulting in structural changes to the linings of the lungs, and may include reduced body mass, weakness and wasting.

Treatments for COPD
COPD cannot be cured, but bronchodilators can give a patient immediate relief from breathlessness, and longer-acting bronchodilators are also available (these are the same medicines that treat asthma).

Combinations of bronchodilators and inhaled steroids are also important in the treatment of patients with COPD. Despite current approved interventions, however, there remains a significant unmet need for alternate therapies.

GSK is investigating possible new interventions that target COPD inflammation, including a long-acting phosphodiesterase inhibitor delivered direct to the lung through an inhaler. In addition, a class of inhibitors is being developed that could offer a level of disease control - particularly anti-inflammatory control.

ECLIPSE study
In 2007, GSK launched ECLIPSE, a non-drug study that aims to follow the progression of COPD and identify relevant markers that may help to improve the ability to diagnose COPD, define its severity and predict its progression over time.
 
The three-year, multi-centre study involves over 2,000 patients aged 40-75, along with 500 'control subjects' such as current smokers, former smokers and those who have never smoked.

World COPD Day
World COPD Day 2009 on 18 November is organised by the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) and other organisations. The theme of this year’s World COPD Day is 'Breathless not helpless'.

Reference sources
WHO website on COPD
Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease

 Back to top