Redefining a disease

At 76, Crapo remains co-director of a massive observational study of smokers across the United States called COPDGene, which he and his colleagues started 12 years ago at National Jewish Health in Denver, Colorado. Since 2008, COPDGene researchers have worked to define the spectrum of disease courses that lead to COPD by tracking the health and genetics of more than 10,000 current and former smokers. [...]along the way, the data have led them to conclude that the current definition of the disease is much too narrow. Since the late 1990s, COPD has been diagnosed according to a set of criteria developed by the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD). [...]in 1997, a group of pulmonology researchers, as well as representatives from the World Health Organization and the US National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, formed GOLD as a way to raise awareness of COPD, standardize its diagnosis and encourage research on prevention and treatment. According to GOLD, a person can be diagnosed with COPD if the ratio of FEV1 to FVC is below 0.7 - meaning the person exhales less than 70% of the air in their lungs in one second.