Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and asthma are defined as chronic inflammatory airway diseases. There is increasing evidence that systemic inflammation may be involved in their pathogenesis too. We aimed to investigate the C-reactive protein levels in plasma of patients with COPD, asthma and control subjects and to evaluate associations of C-reactive protein levels with pulmonary function and smoking history.
Material and methods: We investigated 87 persons: 41 with COPD, 30 with asthma, and 16 controls. Clinical evaluation, pulmonary function tests, C-reactive protein concentration measurement, body mass index and smoking history evaluation were performed.
Results: We determined significantly higher C-reactive protein concentrations in COPD patients compared with asthma patients and controls (8.37+/-1.14 vs 3.14+/-0.67 and 2.39+/-0.59 mg/L, respectively; P<0.001). C-reactive protein concentrations in smokers and ex-smokers with COPD were significantly higher than in COPD non-smokers (8.38+/-1.52 and 10.4+/-2.22 vs 4.10+/-0.86 mg/L, respectively; P<0.05). In COPD patients, C-reactive protein level correlated with FEV(1) (R=-0.463, P=0.002), FEV(1)/FVC (R=-0.449, P=0.003), and pack-years (R=0.572, P=0.001). There was no correlation between C-reactive protein level and analyzed parameters in asthmatics and control group.
Conclusions: Our data support the hypothesis that systemic inflammation plays a role in the pathogenesis of COPD, and cigarette smoking might influence this inflammation.