Expression profiling suggests loss of surface integrity and failure of regenerative repair as major driving forces for COPD progression
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ABSTRACT: Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease poses a major risk for public health, yet remarkably little is known about its detailed pathophysiology. Definition of COPD as non-reversible pulmonary obstruction may thus reveal more about the spatial orientation of the disease than about its mechanisms. We conducted a controlled observational study allowing for simultaneous assessment of clinical and biological development in COPD. 16 healthy controls and 104 subjects with chronic bronchitis, with or without pulmonary obstruction at baseline, were investigated using both extent and change of bronchial obstruction as main scoring criteria for the analysis of gene expression in lung tissue. We identified 410 genes significantly associated with progression of COPD. 110 of these genes demonstrated a distinctive expression pattern, their functional annotations indicating a participation in the regulation of cellular coherence, membrane integrity, growth and differentiation as well as inflammation and fibroproliferative repair. The regulatory pattern indicates a sequentially unfolding pathology that centers on a two-step failure of surface integrity commencing with a loss of epithelial coherence as early as chronic bronchitis. Decline of regenerative repair starting in GOLD stage I then activates degradation of ECM hyaluronan causing structural failure of the bronchial wall only to be resolved by scar formation.
ORGANISM(S): Homo sapiens
PROVIDER: GSE162635 | GEO | 2021/12/31
REPOSITORIES: GEO
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