COPD & Emphysema Support Group

I just received a link to the following article from another COPD email list I'm on. There's some really startling (IMHO) statistics about the funding for COPD. This is an excellent article that I find encouraging for us to become more proactive in getting the word out and getting funding.
Hope for The Future in Managing and Curing COPD by Dr. Robert Rubin

COPD/Emphysema is a huge and growing medical and ultimately social problem in the United States. Some estimates place the number of those suffering with this disease class as high as 30 million Americans. Given these numbers, it is surprising that so little has been accomplished in the way of new treatments, public awareness or political action to combat this major public health disaster. I would like to explore the reasons for this and the huge benefits that current research suggests will come out of changes in these impediments to progress in combating this disease.

First, let's explore what could happen if the government and patients and their families became highly proactive in the fight to cure or treat this disease. For the past 75 years, there has been little progress in either treating the condition or curing it. Oxygen, steroid therapy and lung reduction surgery and other palliative treatments do not slow the progression of the disease. The lungs have been seen as static, unchangeable organs not amenable to self-repair. Recent breakthroughs in our understanding of basic lung biology has changed all of this for the better. We now know that it is possible for lungs to repair themselves given the appropriate molecular stimulus. In animals, actual lung regeneration can be induced for lungs damaged structurally using drugs related to vitamin A. We now know that lungs naturally undergo degradation and reformation under certain kinds of stress such as severe starvation and re-feeding. We have recently discovered certain proteins that appear to play a role in the degradative process, and there are methods available to potentially regulate the genes that control the production of these degradative proteins in the lungs. Stem cell research also offers hope for an entirely different approach to lung regeneration that is entirely unexplored. These embryonic cells are now known to exist in certain adult tissues and bone marrow and are known to be able to differentiate into organ-specific structures in lab animals. Breakthroughs are being made weekly in this field for heart, brain and bone diseases but not COPD. Why is this? In fact, what are the factors that hold back progress to a cure for COPD? Unfortunately, the factors are all within the community of patients and their families. Let me explain.

Cont at: http://lrri.org/cr/copd.html

From all that I have seen, this is exactly what the COPD Foundation, as well as some of the people here and other sites have been trying to do for some time.
The registry at the COPD Foundation, The COPD Council all are working towards this end.

Yes, we sure do need to get off our butts and become pro-active. Too few have been left to carry the load for us all.

I signed up at the registry at I challenge the rest of you to do this and become active with maybe finding a cure etc....

Sign up here: http://www.copdfoundation.org/
Posted on 01/09/08, 02:01 am