Chest
Clinical Investigations: COPDAnemia and Inflammation in COPD
Section snippets
Patient Population
We recruited 101 patients (mean age [± SEM], 60.8 ± 1.2 years; 35 women and 66 men) with COPD diagnosed according to the guidelines of the American Thoracic Society.5 All patients showed an FEV1 reversibility of < 9% in response to inhaled bronchodilators. In this population, 21 were smokers, 75 were ex-smokers, and 5 were nonsmokers (> 5 years of smoking cessation). Grading the disease severity revealed that 23 patients had mild COPD, 36 patients had moderate COPD, and 42 patients had severe
Prevalence and Characteristics of Anemia
According to the definition of anemia in this study (hemoglobin concentration in men < 13.5 mg/dL; hemoglobin concentration in women < 12.0 mg/dL), 13 of 101 COPD patients were anemic, which represents a prevalence of anemia of 13%. Anemia appeared as normochromic and normocytic. In a subgroup of nine anemic patients, erythropoietin was measured and appeared to be higher in the anemic group compared to nonanemic COPD patients and normal control subjects (p < 0.05) [Table 1]
Characteristic of Anemic and Nonanemic COPD Patients in Comparison to Normal Control Subjects
The main
Discussion
This study documents that anemia occurs relatively frequently in COPD patients and is related to the presence of inflammation. Anemia is an understudied issue in COPD but may be of great importance in this disease. In our cohort, anemia (with hemoglobin concentrations < 12.0 g/dL in women and < 13.5 g/dL in men) was present in as many as 13% of all COPD patients. This may be an underestimation of the anemia prevalence, as we have excluded patients with anemia related to bleeding and known
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