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Purpose: To analyze the reliability and validity of the Brief international classification of functioning, disability and health (ICF) core set for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD)., Patients and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted in four tertiary hospitals in Tianjin, China. A total of 100 patients with COPD were selected to evaluate functioning and disability involving body functions, body structures, activities and participation as well as environmental factors of the Brief ICF core set for COPD. Internal consistency was calculated by Cronbach's α. Content validity was examined using the content validity index (CVI), scale-level CVI/universal agreement, and scale-level CVI/average agreement (S-CVI/Ave). In addition, construct validity and convergent validity were also examined., Results: The Brief ICF core set for COPD had a high internal consistency, 0.873 for the total scale, with values of 0.750, 0.640, and 0.843 for body functions, body structures, and activity and participation, respectively. The content validity was calculated by the CVI, scale-level CVI/universal agreement, and S-CVI/Ave at values of 0.80-1, 0.929, and 0.986, respectively. Meanwhile, the ICF core set for COPD had good convergent validity, correlating with the mMRC dyspnea score (r=0.690, P<0.01), and there were significant correlations between the ICF core set for COPD and COPD clinical severity grade (r=0.363, P<0.01). A four-factor model of functions and disability in the Brief ICF core set for COPD had the best fit according to confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)., Conclusion: The Brief ICF core set for COPD is a reliable and valid convenient instrument for assessing comprehensive problems in the functioning of patients with COPD, which can be used to design and to evaluate rehabilitation strategies., Competing Interests: The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work., (© 2021 Zhang et al.)

Purpose: Autophagy plays essential roles in the development of COPD. We aim to identify and validate the potential autophagy-related genes of COPD through bioinformatics analysis and experiment validation., Methods: The mRNA expression profile dataset GSE38974 was obtained from GEO database. The potential differentially expressed autophagy-related genes of COPD were screened by R software. Then, protein-protein interactions (PPI), correlation analysis, gene-ontology (GO) enrichment analysis and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathway enrichment analysis were applied for the differentially expressed autophagy-related genes. Finally, RNA expression of top five differentially expressed autophagy-related genes was validated in blood samples from COPD patients and healthy controls by qRT-PCR., Results: A total of 40 differentially expressed autophagy-related genes (14 up-regulated genes and 26 down-regulated genes) were identified between 23 COPD patients and 9 healthy controls. The PPI results demonstrated that these autophagy-related genes interacted with each other. The GO and KEGG enrichment analysis of differentially expressed autophagy-related genes indicated several enriched terms related to autophagy and mitophagy. The results of qRT-PCR showed that the expression levels of HIF1A, CDKN1A, BAG3, ERBB2 and ATG16L1 in COPD patients and healthy controls were consistent with the bioinformatics analysis results from mRNA microarray., Conclusion: We identified 40 potential autophagy-related genes of COPD through bioinformatics analysis. HIF1A, CDKN1A, BAG3, ERBB2 and ATG16L1 may affect the development of COPD by regulating autophagy. These results may expand our understanding of COPD and might be useful in the treatment of COPD., Competing Interests: The authors report no conflicts of interest in this work., (© 2021 Sun et al.)