What if doctors could tell you decades in advance whether you’re likely to develop lung disease? Researchers at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus are working to make that idea a reality.
Dr. William Vandivier, a professor in the pulmonary division at CU and director of UCHealth’s Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) program, is leading a study designed to identify those at risk for COPD long before they develop symptoms. The research could change how doctors approach one of the most common and deadly respiratory diseases in America.
“It can take 20 or 30 years to develop disease if you smoke cigarettes,” Vandivier says. “We really have no idea who’s going to get it until they do. A lot happens in the lung in that 20 or 30 years – things that you don’t want to have happen. It would help us if we could understand what happens really early in the disease, so we might be able to prevent it or treat it better.”…