This year's American Thoracic Society's (ATS) International Conference in Denver, CO is hosting hundreds of abstracts and posters from leading pulmonologists and researchers from across the globe. We're excited to provide you with a sneak peek of preliminary findings from studies that are paving the way for better therapies for COPD.
Dr. John Hokanson and Dr. Gregory Kinney, both from the University of Colorado in Denver, are part of a team presenting a poster at the ATS Conference for healthcare providers and researchers in the field of lung health.
The poster titled, “History of Occupational Exposure to Dust and Fumes is Associated with a History of Cardiovascular Disease in COPD Subjects,” covers their study on whether dust exposure in the workplace is related to cardiovascular disease (CVD) in people with and without COPD.
Hokanson, who is the senior author of this poster and serves as a professor in the Department of Epidemiology with a secondary appointment in Environmental and Occupational Health at the University, says there has been substantial evidence that dust in the workplace is related to both cardiovascular disease and COPD, but “nobody has looked at whether the exposure to dust can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease for people with COPD.”
“Our group [at the University of Colorado] has been interested in studying the relationship between cardiovascular disease and COPD. This is one of several COPD studies that we’re doing,” Hokanson says.
“COPD is related to cardiovascular disease, and cardiovascular disease is related to severity. If you have COPD and CVD, it decreases various functional aspects of patients with COPD, for example in measures of function, [such as] the six-minute walk.”
To date, 2,500 individuals have signed up to test their hypothesis.
For the study, Kinney says they asked each participant if they ever had previous jobs that exposed them to dust and/or chemical vapors in the workplace, and if they had a history of cardiovascular disease.
Kinney compared individuals with COPD and those without COPD, as well as those with occupational dust and/or fume exposure and those without.
“The basic finding in those with COPD and occupational dust/fume exposure compared to those without, were at a 2.7-fold increase risk for cardiovascular disease compared to those without COPD and without dust/fume exposure,” says Kinney, an epidemiologist at the University of Colorado Health Sciences Center.
“We went a bit farther out and found that individuals only exposed to dust were significantly associated with cardiovascular disease, those exposed to only fumes were not, but those exposed to the combination of the two were,” Kinney says.
Hokanson says the study was generated by self-reported data—a questionnaire.
“The relationship between cardiovascular disease and COPD may have a mechanism of inflammation. There’s good evidence that with cardiovascular disease, COPD has a major inflammatory component,” Hokanson says. “These studies are actively trying to pursue whether this is due to a common etiology or different pathways.”
Dr. Barbara Yawn, co-director, along with co-directors Dr. Paul Enright and Dr. Paul Scanlon are presenting a poster titled, “Spirometry Mentorship Project” at ATS, which discusses a new program to put spirometry into primary care offices.
“Right now, we know that many primary care offices don’t have spirometry, or they’re just beginning to use lung tests. What we’re trying to do with this is not just teach the physicians how to use spirometry, but help them interpret and read the results to use in their clinical practice,” Yawn says. This will be helpful for patients because they will have physicians who know how to use the tools of spirometry to guide the care of their COPD.
“There are patients that have never had spirometry, or perhaps they have had spirometry and it’s not being used properly for their care. That’s a big problem because they may not be getting appropriate medications for their level of disease or disease severity. This [program] is intended to deal specifically with that,” Yawn says.
She says the program is divided into two parts. The first part is a self-evaluation survey for the physicians to measure their current use of spirometry in their care of individuals with asthma and COPD. The first part of the program closes with lectures and readings.
During the second part, each physician will be paired with a mentor who is an expert in interpreting spirometry results and will review the learner’s assessment, reading over each spirometry test and providing feedback to the learner to help them gain the comfort, experience and expertise needed to successfully use spirometry within their practice. After the phases are completed, the physicians will take a post-test to reinforce what they learned in that class.
There is a waiting list of 200 physicians interested in participating in the project, but Yawn encourages more physicians to sign up. This project is looking for two groups of people: primary care physicians who want to sign up and pulmonologists/experts who wish to be mentors. Physicians who want to register should visit: http://quality.thoracic.org.
“We think it will give us the potential to diagnose sooner and more accurately and better identify the staging (as far as severity) in determining what medicines to use,” Yawn says. “As a side benefit, it will help people with asthma because they can also benefit from spirometry.”
These posters are just a sampling of what will be available at this year’s ATS International Conference.
Dr. James Donohue, ATS Foundation Chair, says this year’s conference will be a “rewarding and exciting meeting.”
“Denver is a terrific location because of its great institutions for learning and studying lung disease. This meeting is great because we’re the primary professional society interested in lung disease research with a membership of 15,000 representing local clinical organizations and international institutions,” Donohue says.
Each year at ATS, they host an annual ATS Foundation Research Program Dinner that all ATS members are welcome to attend. During this dinner, Dr. Louis S. Libby will receive the ATS Foundation’s 2011 “Breathing for Life” Award, which is the highest honor that the Foundation gives to an ATS leader. In 2009, the ATS Public Advisory Roundtable was given this honor, and in 2010 U.S. Senator Michael Crapo (R-ID) received the award.
This Research Program Dinner is important in that it accounts for half the money the ATS Foundation uses for research. The other half comes from contributions, usually from members of ATS, Donohue says.
“One thing we’re really trying to improve is the quality of the meetings for clinician members through clinical tracks, reviews and timely updates—all relevant to clinical medicine. Overall, it’s a great opportunity for both basic scientists and clinical collaborators to get together and talk about these issues in a great environment,” he says.
“ This will be helpful for patients because they will have physicians who know how to use the tools of spirometry to guide the care of their COPD.”—Dr. Barbara Yawn
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