Epidemiology and costs of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease

The Burden of Obstructive Lung Disease (BOLD) initiative to facilitate standardised burden studies at an international level; and 3) the ongoing discussions to set up large, long-term cohorts of patients to better define the natural history of COPD. These programmes, together with the dissemination of GOLD in .70 countries, are helping to spread a more positive message about COPD and raise awareness of its importance. This International Research Workshop on the Global Burden of COPD was organised with the aid of an unrestricted grant from GlaxoSmithKline R&D (Greenford, Middlesex, UK). The current authors were able to convince .30 researchers, most of them with an international reputation in COPD epidemiology,…

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