Characteristics of Current Smokers versus Former Smokers with COPD and Their Associations with Smoking Cessation Within 4.5 Years: Results from COSYCONET.

"Disclosure Dr Robert Bals reports grants from BMBF, during the conduct of the study; personal fees/grants from CSL Behring, DFG, GSK, and Schwiete Stifung, outside the submitted work. Prof. Dr Tobias Welte reports grants from German Ministry of Research and Education, during the conduct of the study; personal fees from AstraZeneca, Berlin-Chemie, Chiesi, GSK, Novartis, outside the submitted work. Prof. Dr Klaus Rabe reports personal fees from AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Berlin Chemie, Chiesi Pharmaceuticals, GSK, CSL Behring, Sanofi & Regeneron and shareholder of rnatics, outside the submitted work. Dr Claus Vogelmeier reports personal fees and/or grants from Aerogen, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, CSL Behring, Chiesi, GlaxoSmithKline, Grifols, Insmed, MedUpdate, Menarini, Novartis, Nuvaira, Roche, and Sanofi, during the conduct of the study. The authors report no other conflicts of interest in this work."

"COSYCONET is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) Competence Network Asthma and COPD (ASCONET) and performed in collaboration with the German Center for Lung Research (DZL). The project is funded by the BMBF with grant number 01 GI 0881 and is supported by unrestricted grants from AstraZeneca GmbH, Bayer Schering Pharma AG, Boehringer Ingelheim Pharma GmbH & Co. KG, Chiesi GmbH, GlaxoSmithKline, Grifols Deutschland GmbH, MSD Sharp & Dohme GmbH, Mundipharma GmbH, Novartis Deutschland GmbH, Pfizer Pharma GmbH, Takeda Pharma Vertrieb GmbH & Co. KG, Teva GmbH for patient investigations and laboratory measurements. For the present study, an additional grant for data management was given by Novartis Pharma GmbH. The funding body had no involvement in the design of the study or the collection, analysis or interpretation of the data."

"COSYCONET is an ongoing, long-term, observational multi-center cohort of patients with COPD. Patients of Global Initiative for Chronic Obstructive Lung Disease (GOLD) grades 1 to 4 were included, as well as patients of the former GOLD grade 0 referring to patients with chronic bronchitis without fulfilling the spirometric criterion forced expiratory volume in 1 s to forced vital capacity ratio (FEV1/FVC) <0.7. Details of the COSYCONET study design, baseline characteristics, and in- and exclusion criteria have been described previously. Follow-up visits were conducted at 6, 18, 36 and 54 months after enrolment (visits 2 to 5). The analysis comprised two study populations, first that of visit 1 for cross-sectional analysis, and second that of patients remaining in the study until visit 5 for longitudinal analysis. COSYCONET was approved by the ethics committees of all study centers and conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. All participants provided their written informed consent. ClinicalTrials.gov: NCT01245933."