Regular meeting, April 8th
On April 8th 2010 a regular investigators meeting was held in the Hilton hotel, Schiphol Airport, Amsterdam, the Netherlands. It was the 5th meeting since the start of the COPACETIC project.
A brief summary…
The meeting was opened with a word of welcome by Pieter Zanen and a small round of introduction by all the persons present.
Marleen Verduyn gave an update on the COPACETIC website. The site for patients with patient information is now online and is available in several languages. A section will be added for PhD-students to report their results and render the site more interactive.
Asger Dirksen introduced the Danish Lung Cancer Screening Study (DLCST) which was added recently to the COPACETIC consortium.. The study includes ~2,050 controls and screened subjects who underwent annual CT-screening and prebronchodilator PFT. The inclusion criteria were similar to that of the NELSON study. One difference is the inclusion of females.
Asia Smolanska presented next the genome-wide association scan (GWAS) results on COPD, defined as ‘obstructive disease’ opposed to emphysema (see below). Close to 400 SNPs with a significance level ≤1*10-4 were found of which 352 passed quality control, and were replicated.
Akkelies Dijkstra presented the outcome of the GWAS on the presence of chronic bronchitis, defined as cough and/or phlegm with of without mucus present for more than three months and chronic mucus hypersecretion.
After lunch Bram van Ginneken gave a presentation on how to deal with the emphysema scores in the UMCG, UMCU and DLSCT cohorts. It was shown that correcting for tracheal air density differences between scanner differences can be eliminated.
Subsequently,Asia Smolanska presented the first results of the emphysema GWAS. After this presentation a debate was held on the choice of the proper emphysema marker. A choice was made to use tracheal air corrected estimates and the 15th percentile approach (the HU-level delineating the left 15% tail of each individual distribution).
Dirkje Postma gave a brief introduction on collaboration with other groups.
The next meeting will be planned in early October 2010. Pieter Zanen will propose new dates. He closed the meeting by wishing everyone a safe trip home.
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