Asthma and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease are different disorders that may coexist in individual patients. Patients with asthma-COPD overlap (ACO) have a greater disease burden and worse health outcomes than patients with either condition alone. To date, much of our present knowledge of ACO has been extrapolated from asthma and COPD studies, which often excluded individuals with ACO. Since asthma and COPD are heterogeneous diseases, ACO is also likely to have a number of phenotypes that can be identified by detailed clinical and genetic identifiers. Using the UK Biobank as the study population, this study aims to: 1) investigate genetic commonalities and differences among ACO and each disease alone, and 2) identify how smoking and non-smoking risk factors are at play in pathophysiology of ACO. Completion of these aims will provide critical insight into genetic factors and gene-environmental interactions that opens new windows of opportunities for its prevention and proper therapeutic intervention.
