Further evidence of a type 2 inflammatory signature in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or emphysema

A bidirectional Mendelian randomization study investigating the relationship between genetically predicted systemic inflammatory regulators and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

Research has shown a connection between inflammation and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), however the relationship between inflammation mediators and COPD causation remains unknown. To investigate the causal relationship of mediators of inflammation and COPD, we conducted a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) study. In our study, we incorporated 41 regulators of inflammation from 8293 Finnish individuals from genome-wide association studies (GWASs) of COPD corresponding to GWAS summary data for 2115 cases and 454,233 healthy individuals in Europe. Our research validated that higher levels of interleukin 8 (IL-8) are related with a decrease occurrence of COPD (OR = 0.795, 95 % CI = 0.642-0.984, p = 0.035) but that elevated levels of interleukin 18(IL-18) and interleukin 2 (IL-2) may be connected to an amplified risk of COPD (OR = 1.247, 95 % CI = 1.011-1.538; p = 0.039; OR = 1.257, 95 % CI = 1.037-1.523, p = 0.020, respectively). According to our research, cytokines play a crucial role in the development of COPD, and further investigation is necessary to explore the potential of utilizing these cytokines as targets for treatment and prevention of COPD.

The future landscape of immunology in COPD: A bibliometric analysis

BACKGROUND

This study was conducted to provide a comparative and comprehensive analysis of the last 50 years of research in the immunology of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and to identify future research priorities and directions.

METHODS

We obtained publication information from the Web of Science Core Collection (WoSCC) database. Scimago Graphica, CiteSpace, VOSviewer, GraphPad Prism, Microsoft Excel 365, and the R package "bibliometrix" were used for bibliometric analysis. The methodologies used were burst citation, clustering and co-citation, keyword co-occurrence, and cooperative network graph clustering algorithms.

RESULTS

A total of 2239 articles and reviews were included in the analysis. The number of annual publications showed an upward trend amidst fluctuations. The countries, institutions, journals, and authors with the highest number of publications were the USA, Imperial College London (ICL), Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology, and Murphy TF. There are 58 references and 13 keywords with a burst citation nature in the last 3 years, related to the study of inflammatory mechanisms.

CONCLUSION

We used bibliometric analysis to understand the research progress regarding immune function in COPD. Meanwhile, we found that the hotspots of COPD immunology in basic research focus on the analysis of etiology and risk factors, and the exploration of the immune system; and the hotspots of COPD in clinical research focus on epidemiology, and the prevention and management of different subtypes of COPD.

Exhaled Nitric Oxide as Biomarker of Type 2 Diseases

Nitric oxide (NO) is a short-lived gas molecule which has been studied for its role as a signaling molecule in the vasculature and later, in a broader view, as a cellular messenger in many other biological processes such as immunity and inflammation, cell survival, apoptosis, and aging. Fractional exhaled nitric oxide (FeNO) is a convenient, easy-to-obtain, and non-invasive method for assessing active, mainly Th2-driven, airway inflammation, which is sensitive to treatment with standard anti-inflammatory therapy. Consequently, FeNO serves as a valued tool to aid the diagnosis and monitoring of several asthma phenotypes. More recently, FeNO has been evaluated in several other respiratory and/or immunological conditions, including allergic rhinitis, chronic rhinosinusitis with/without nasal polyps, atopic dermatitis, eosinophilic esophagitis, and food allergy. In this review, we aim to provide an extensive overview of the current state of knowledge about FeNO as a biomarker in type 2 inflammation, outlining past and recent data on the application of its measurement in patients affected by a broad variety of atopic/allergic disorders.