Description
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is a smoking-related disease that lacks effective therapies due partly to the poor understanding of disease pathogenesis. The aim of this study was to identify molecular pathways which could be responsible for the damaging consequences of smoking. To do this, we employed recently described bioinformatic methods to analyze differences in global gene expression, which we then related to the pathological changes induced by cigarette smoke (CS). Sprague-Dawley rats were exposed to whole-body CS for 1 day and for various periods up to 8 months.