Patent ID: 8415112

Claim:
A method for diagnosing chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) in a human subject or the risk of a human subject to develop COPD comprising the steps of: providing a sample from a human subject, determining the amount of caspase-cleaved cytokeratin-18 (ccCK-18), histones, heat shock protein 27 (HSP27), heat shock protein 70 (HSP70) and/or heat shock protein 90 alpha (HSP90 alpha) in said sample, diagnosing COPD when the amount of ccCK-18, histones, HSP27, HSP70 and/or HSP90 alpha is increased compared to the amount of ccCK-18, histones, HSP27, HSP70 and/or HSP90 alpha in healthy human subjects, or diagnosing the risk to develop COPD when the amount of ccCK-18, histones and/or HSP70 is reduced compared to the amount of ccCK-18, histones and/or HSP70 in healthy human subjects.