Thesis & Dissertations

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a chronic airway inflammatory disease, which is characterized by not completely reversible airflow limitation, inflammatory cells infiltration, mucus overproduction and airway remodeling. As a complex disease, the exact molecular mechanism of COPD is still unknown. Protease and anti-protease imbalance was considered as an important mechanism implicated in the pathogenesis of COPD. The activity of MMPs is dependent on the gene encoding them. The existence of gene polymorphism determines the different expression level of these genes among individuals, which eventually result in different phenotype of disease in a population. In the past decade, extensive efforts have been made to find out the relationship between MMP single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and COPD risk in several populations. There are many candidate genes for chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Matrix metalloproteinase-9 (MMP-9) plays an essential role in tissue remodeling and repair associated with development of COPD. In this study we investigated the correlation between MMP-9 gene polymorphism and COPD susceptibility in Lebanese population. Our study done on 24 COPD patients who were taken from one hospital in Tyr, has not shown any susceptible relation between the SNP and COPD. Also, there is no association between gender and smoking on COPD prevalence except one positive result which is there is association between duration of smoking and COPD prevalence (P-value 0.002<0.05) which is significant but not enough. Thus, we deduced there is no association between gender and mutations of healthy smokers and COPD group. However, we have one positive result, that there is association between COPD prevalence and smoking duration in the COPD group. Moreover, larger patients sample is needed to confirm the results.