Routine Blood Tests Could Enable Early Detection of COPD

This is largely due to the challenge of performing the current reference diagnostic test—spirometry—on a large scale. The difficulty of implementing spirometry across the population leads to delayed or missed diagnoses, often resulting in patients seeking care only when the disease has significantly progressed. Late diagnoses also raise the risk of associated conditions such as lung cancer. Now, researchers have identified specific metabolites in the blood of COPD patients that could serve as biomarkers to help detect the disease early and guide individuals toward confirmatory testing.

This discovery was the result of a multicenter study led by the Hospital del Mar Medical Research Institute (IMIM, Barcelona, Spain), CIBER Respiratory Diseases (CIBERES Madrid, Spain), and collaborators. The study analyzed blood samples from 91 patients with COPD and 91 healthy controls, identifying 360 different molecules through mass spectrometry. Out of these, approximately 50 were found to be most relevant, and artificial intelligence (AI) was used to select the ten most effective metabolites for detecting COPD. These metabolites are linked to energy production and lipid metabolism, potentially explaining both fatigue and cardiovascular comorbidities frequently observed in COPD patients. The altered metabolites were measured using standard blood tests, which researchers suggest could be easily adapted into a population-level screening tool.

The findings, published in the International Journal of Molecular Sciences, show that the selected biomarkers had a sensitivity and specificity of over 90% in distinguishing between COPD patients and healthy individuals. This focused set of markers offers a practical pathway to early detection using routine blood tests, which could initiate earlier treatment and closer monitoring of comorbidities. Researchers now plan to validate the efficacy of these biomarkers in a larger and more diverse population, with the goal of integrating the findings into routine clinical practice.

"This could give us a tool for early detection of individuals with COPD, which would allow treatment to begin in the early stages of the disease and enable closer monitoring of potential comorbidities," said IMIM researcher Dr. Joaquim Gea.

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