Accumulated evidence suggests that endothelial dysfunction occurs in early stages of COPD and worsens with pulmonary obstruction severity and during acute exacerbations.
Novel functional methods for assessing endothelial damage can provide real-time evaluation of vascular function in COPD, potentially elucidating the link between COPD progression and cardiovascular disease.
Introduction: Cardiovascular disease is a major cause of death in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but the relationship between these two entities is not fully understood; smoking, inflammation, arterial stiffness and endothelial dysfunction are significant determinants. Endothelial dysfunction is not only associated with cardiovascular disease, but also with COPD severity.Areas covered: Several functional methods have been developed to evaluate endothelial function in healthy and diseased individuals; from the invasive angiography of epicardial coronary arteries and Venous-Occlusion-Plethysmography, to more modern, noninvasive approaches such as Flow-Mediated-Dilatation, Peripheral-Arterial-Tonometry and Near-Infrared-Spectroscopy, all these methods have boosted clinical research in this field. In this context, this narrative review, which included articles published in PubMed and Scopus up to 25-November-2020, summarizes available functional methods for endothelial damage assessment in COPD and discusses existing evidence on their associations with comorbidities and outcomes in this population.Expert opinion: Accumulated evidence suggests that endothelial dysfunction occurs in early stages of CΟPD and worsens with pulmonary obstruction severity and during acute exacerbations. Novel methods evaluating endothelial function offer a detailed, real-time assessment of different parameters related to vascular function and should be increasingly used to shed more light on the role of endothelial damage on cardiovascular and COPD progression.
Theodorakopoulou et al. (Tue,) conducted a review in Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Functional methods for endothelial damage assessment was evaluated. Accumulated evidence suggests that endothelial dysfunction occurs in early stages of COPD and worsens with pulmonary obstruction severity and during acute exacerbations.
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