Anti-inflammatory effects of tiotropium in COPD: a randomised double-blind trial.

Background: COPD is a major global health issue characterised by respiratory symptoms and exacerbations, significantly impacting mortality and quality of life. Muscarinic antagonists are known to prevent exacerbations, possibly by mitigating airway inflammation. This study evaluated the anti-inflammatory effects of tiotropium in patients with COPD by examining inflammatory protein profiles in sputum and blood, and genome-wide expression in sputum.

Improved Annotation of Asthma Gene Variants with Cell Type Deconvolution of Nasal and Lung Expression Quantitative Trait Loci.

Asthma is a genetically complex inflammatory airway disease associated with more than 200 SNPs. However, the functional effects of many asthma-associated SNPs in lung and airway epithelial samples are unknown. Here, we aimed to conduct expression quantitative trait loci (eQTL) analysis using a meta-analysis of nasal and lung samples.

Nasal epithelial gene expression identifies relevant asthma endotypes in the ATLANTIS study.

Introduction: Asthma is an inflammatory airways disease encompassing multiple phenotypes and endotypes. Several studies suggested gene expression in nasal epithelium to serve as a proxy for bronchial epithelium, being a non-invasive approach to investigate lung diseases. We hypothesised that molecular differences in upper airway epithelium reflect asthma-associated differences in the lower airways and are associated with clinical expression of asthma.