Update in Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease in 2010

Abstract

The year 2010 marked several milestones for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Unfortunately, COPD moved from fourth leading cause of death in the United States to third. On the other hand, the United States also celebrated the 1-year anniversary of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (FSPTCA), which led to increased regulation of tobacco marketing, and the implementation of public health strategies to reduce tobacco-related morbidity and mortality (1). Also in 2010, the editorial team of the Journal published an article entitled “What the Journal Would Like to Publish on Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease” (2). This article challenged the scientific community to focus on issues such as understanding disease susceptibility, the mechanism of inflammation persistence after smoking exposure is withdrawn, and the multicomponent nature of the disease. The review that follows is an overview of key publications on COPD in the last year. So I invite you to be the judge: Have we risen to the challenge? The obstacles we face in understanding and treating COPD are great, but not unique. The year 2010 also marked the 5-year anniversary for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation Grand Challenges in Global Health initiative. In reviewing the past 5 years, Bill Gates reflected, “We were naive when we began.” The rate of discovery in medical research may seem slow relative to the exponential pace of advance in fields such as computing. Yet we are making progress. The articles that follow demonstrate progress in our understanding of host susceptibility and the inflammatory response in COPD, and also the mechanisms of currently available therapies and how biomarkers may help us better target therapies in the future.