Objective: To describe the clinical characteristics and identifiable
risk factors for
Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (
COPD ) in a real-world clinical setting.
Design: Cross-sectional study among
patients with
COPD .
Setting: The Respiratory clinic of the Lagos
University Teaching Hospital .
Participants: Consecutive
patients with
spirometry confirmed
COPD on follow-up for ≥3 months. There were 79 participants. Intervention None Main outcome
measure: COPD risk factors ,
disease severity , comorbidities, and the severity of airflow limitation.
Results: The mean age of the participants was 63.3± 12.4 years, and 47 (59.5) were
male . There was a high
symptom burden (73.4% had
COPD assessment test (
CAT ) score >10), 33 (41.8%) and 4 (5.1%) had
GOLD 3 and
GOLD 4 airflow limitation, respectively.
Risk factors were identified for 96.2% of the
participants: history of
asthma in 37 (46.8%),
tobacco smoking 22 (27.8%),
occupational exposure 15 (19%),
biomass exposure 5 (6.6%), post-
tuberculosis 3 (3.8%), old age (3.8%), and prematurity 1 (1.3%). Fifty-nine (74.7%) had
Asthma COPD Overlap (ACO). There were no significant
associations between the
risk factors and
disease severity . Participants with ACO had lower
lung function and a high frequency of
allergic rhinitis .
Conclusion: Asthma was the most commonly identifiable
risk factor for
COPD , underscoring
asthma risk reduction and management optimisation as priorities toward
COPD burden
mitigation .
Future studies need to validate these findings and identify the predominant
COPD phenotypes in our setting.