Abstract
Introduction: Blood eosinophil count (eos) may be a predictive biomarker of corticosteroid (CS) responsiveness in COPD patients, yet little is known about the stability of eos in this population. This study evaluated the stability of eos over 1 yr in a population-based cohort of COPD patients in primary care. Methods: The cohort included patients aged ≥40 yrs with a medical code for COPD during 2010–12, a FEV 1 /FVC 2 B ) and within-subject (s 2 W ) variance in eos count, and an intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC) was calculated [s 2 B / (s 2 B + s 2 W )] . A sensitivity analysis excluded patients prescribed systemic CSs, which may reduce eos levels, or antibiotics as a possible indicator of exacerbation. All models were adjusted for age, gender, smoking status and history of asthma. Results: 27557 patients were included in the full cohort (52% male, mean age 71 yrs) and contributed a mean of 2.2 eos tests each (SD 2.1, range 1–45). The ICC for the full cohort was 60.7%. This increased to 69.2% in the sensitivity analysis subgroup, largely due to a decrease in the s 2 W (Table). Conclusions: In COPD primary care, eos measures over 1 yr demonstrated reasonable repeatability, which increased after exclusion of patients prescribed CSs or antibiotics. Funded by GSK (ODA2425).
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