COPD RESEARCH DAY 9th edition

PRESENTAZIONE

There are many reasons why chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) deserves to be high on the list of disease targets and research. COPD is still a major public health problem because has an high prevalence and it is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide creating a formidable challenge for the healthcare systems. COPD is one of the most frequent causes of unscheduled visits in the offices of general practitioners and specialists and of emergency wards visits and hospital admissions. Furthermore COPD, causes 3.2 millions of deaths worldwide and represents one of the top causes of death among the Italian population. In addition, COPD care, both directly and indirectly, use a substantial amount of the resources of Italian National Health Service, with a significant impact on social expenses. Despite recent trends in reduction of COPD standardized mortality rates and some recent successes in anti-smoking efforts in a number of Western countries, the overarching demographic impact of ageing in an ever-expanding world population (~ 8.2 billion in October 2025), joined with other factors such as the high rates of cigarette smoking, will ensure that COPD will remain a challenge for clinicians within the 21st century epidemiological point of view.

For every COPD patient that physicians could avoid putting on a long-term ventilator and/or oxygen therapy this will save an enormous amount of money of the Italian National Health Service.

Regione Emilia-Romagna has one of the best attractively (requests of being cured from other Italian regions) mobility of Italy for COPD patients.

Current personalised treatment of COPD is still unable to completely modify the natural history of the disease in its different and complex clinical phenotypes or to fully satisfy the expectations of the patients. In addition there are molecular links, still largely under investigated, between COPD, lung cancer and idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) all smoking-related disease but with different clinical pathological expressions.

It is particularly relevant that in a large longitudinal study of asymptomatic patients with mild-to-moderate COPD, ~ 33% of subjects died of lung cancer over ~15 years suggesting that lung cancer is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in COPD patients. These patients share a common environmental risk factor (smoking) and a genetic predisposition represented by the incidence of these diseases in only a fraction of long term smokers. Moreover there are no prognostic biomarkers to monitor the natural history of the disease in a simple and non-invasive way. For all these reasons, this meeting will represent an important place of discussion between Italian and International experts on the most recent available evidence on the molecular pathogenesis of COPD and novel ongoing therapeutic approaches. The Academic Pulmonology team (https://mc.unipr.it/labpneumolmoltraslazionale) at the University of Parma, Italy (www.unipr.it) wish to stay at the cutting edge of the COPD research with the aim of discovering new therapeutic targets and
new prognostic biomarkers, which may in the future allow us to better control the disease.