COPD is most often caused by smoking. Most patients with COPD are smokers with experience:
- Approximately 10 to 15 smokers out of 100 have COPD.
- Some studies show that half of smokers with experience older than 45 years suffer from COPD.
- COPD is basically a combination of two diseases: chronic bronchitis and emphysema. Both diseases are caused by smoking.
Chronical bronchitis
Almost all patients with chronic bronchitis smoke. Over time, tobacco smoke and other irritants can lead to inflammation of airways (bronchioles). As a result, airways produce more mucus than normal. Inflammation and excessive cough cause excessive production of mucus and narrow the airways.
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Causes of COPD[/caption]Emphysema
With emphysema, tobacco smoke and other irritants can damage elastic fibers in the lungs. These elastic tissues are necessary for normal lung function. When elastic fibers are damaged, tiny air sacs (alveoli) are damaged at the end of the bronchioles. The alveoli are the place where the blood exchanges carbon dioxide (a byproduct of metabolism) for oxygen. With lesions, the walls of the alveoli become large and transmit less oxygen to the blood. Destroyed alveoli can not be replaced.
Other reasons
Other possible causes of COPD include:
- Prolonged exposure to irritants (industrial dust, chemical vapors) on the lungs.
- Low birth weight and repeated infections of the lungs.
- Inherited factors (genes), including antitrypsin alpha 1 deficiency, are a rare disease in which the body can not produce a protein (antitrypsin alpha 1) that protects the lungs from damage. In smokers with this disease, the symptoms of emphysema appear by 30-40 years.