GOLD Stage I Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD)
Status:
Completed
Trial end date:
2011-02-01
Target enrollment:
Participant gender:
Summary
Recently integrated in clinical practice, the Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung
Disease (GOLD) classification states that a mild (stage I) chronic obstructive pulmonary
disease (COPD) is present, in a smoker, when the postbronchodilator forced expired volume in
1 second (FEV1) to forced vital capacity (FVC) ratio is < 0.7. A major change that was
introduced by the GOLD classification system was that COPD could be diagnosed despite an FEV1
that is within normal predicted values (above 80% predicted). Because it suggests diagnosing
and detecting COPD earlier than done until very recently in medical practice, the GOLD
standards bring in a new reality to clinicians. In fact, this novel COPD classification comes
with new research challenges because the functional impacts and systemic consequences related
to COPD are mostly documented in patients with moderate to severe stages with little
information specifically in GOLD stage I COPD. This information is important if the
investigators are to convince physicians that GOLD stage I COPD needs to be diagnosed and
eventually treated.
The investigators aimed to characterize GOLD stage I COPD patients according to
activity-related dyspnea. More specifically, our objectives were to compare:
i) baseline pulmonary function ii) exercise capacity iii) quadriceps muscle function iv)
levels of physical activity in daily life
between symptomatic (Sx) GOLD stage I COPD patients, asymptomatic (ASx) GOLD stage I COPD
patients and healthy control subjects (CTRL). The investigators reasoned that exercise
tolerance and physical activity levels would be decreased in Sx GOLD stage I COPD patients as
it would be similar between ASx GOLD stage I COPD patients and CTRL.