About us

Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) affects around 8% of the UK adult population and is the cause of considerable illness and deaths. Furthermore exacerbations (flare-up of symptoms) are a major cause of hospital admission in the UK. COPD is usually a progressive condition originating with airway inflammation caused mainly by smoking from early adulthood and leading to airflow limitation.

Patients are usually diagnosed with COPD later in life but at this stage the disease is already well established. Understanding the mechanisms of early COPD and studying smokers, and those who quit smoking once enrolled, at a younger age when symptoms first develop and lung function decline is already occurring is especially important.

The main objective of this research is to study the very early stages of development of COPD. This will be done by recruiting a novel cohort of 1000 young smokers in 8 centres, in whom we will follow the trajectories of lung function decline to identify those at risk of progression.