COPD in Non-smokers-Prevalence and Risk Factors

Studies on COPD have largely focused on the smoking rather than the non-smoking population. Hence we conducted the study to identify the non-smoking causes of COPD. The study was conducted in the Department of Tuberculosis and Respiratory Diseases, Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, AMU, Aligarh during 2011-2013 on 450 COPD patients. The aim of the study was to find out proportion of non smokers among all COPD patients, identify risk factors for COPD among non smokers and classify non-smoking COPD patients according to severity. Maximum patients (35.41%) among non smoker COPD group had more than one risk factor for COPD. Most of the patients among non smoker COPD were found to be having severe to very severe disease (63.5%). 34.4% patients had moderate COPD and very few patients had mild COPD (3%). On comparing disease severity among non smoker and smoker COPD patients, we found that proportion of patients with very severe disease was more in smoker group (39.2% in smoker vs. 29.2% in non smoker), while proportion of patients with mild to moderate disease were more in non smoker group (35.5% in non smoker vs. 24% in smoker). Patients with severe disease in both groups were found to be of equal proportion (33.3% in non smoker vs. 36.7% in smoker).