New genetic associations found for COPD in the largest study of its kind

An international team of 144 scientists studying lung function has made a huge leap in understanding chronic obstructive pulmonary disease by conducting the largest multi-ancestry, genome-wide association meta-analysis to date. The study, which included 580,869 participants, identified 1,020 independent disease association signals and implicated 559 genes from a variant-to-gene mapping framework. Most notably, these genes were enriched in 29 pathways, providing new insights into the underlying mechanisms of lung function.