Which Are The Most Relevant Comorbidities In COPD?
Miguel Divo 1, Carlos Cabrera 2
1 Pulmonary and Critical Care Division, Brigham and Women's Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, USA; 2 Pulmonary Department, Hospital Universitario de Gran Canaria Dr Negrin, Las Palmas de Gran Canarias, Spain
*Correspondence: Carlos Cabrera, Email not available
Abstract
The world’s population is aging. A person who does not die of acute illnesses will likely develop more than one non-communicable disease, a phenomenon known as multimorbidity. COPD is the third leading cause of death worldwide and is defined by airflow limitation, but its clinical manifestations are variable and influenced by comorbidities. Comorbidity burden can be measured by the number of coexisting diseases, by their prevalence, and by the impact on outcomes.
There are limitations when traditional epidemiology methods are applied to study the complex interactions amongst many diseases as the relevance of some diseases may mistakenly omitted. We present in this review the results from the most influential COPD comorbidity studies, highlighting those that have provided the most relevant information, and then we present a novel perspective derived from network analysis, which helps interpret the complex interplay among comorbidities.
