March 2025

PULMONARY

DEVELOPING BLOOD TESTS FOR RESPIRATORY ILLNESS

Featuring: Ravi Kalhan, MD, MS

​Research coming out of the Department of Medicine’s Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care outlined a new blood test that could be used to identify adults at risk of developing severe respiratory illnesses, including chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).

The recent study published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine was led by Ravi Kalhan, MD, MS, the Louis A. Simpson Professor of Pulmonary Medicine and associate dean of faculty affairs.
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While COPD isn’t curable, treatments may help improve quality of life, however there are no established methods for detecting lung function decline early to prevent potential severe disease, according to Kalhan, was senior author of the study.

Using blood sample data from more than 2,400 participants enrolled in the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) study, the team used a technique called discovery proteomics to identify 32 unique protein expression levels in the blood samples from individuals with lung function decline compared to those without.

These 32 proteins were then compiled into a proteomic risk score created by Kalhan’s team. The scientists then tested this risk score in two other patient cohorts, one from the COPDGene Study and the other from the U.K. Biobank, to examine associations with future respiratory morbidity and mortality.

“We think this is step one to finding out what causes COPD in the long run. It’s innovative in the sense that it takes a super-important clinical measure that no one can actually determine easily and synthesizes it into a blood test that now we know predicts bad outcomes,” said Kalhan, who is also co-director of the Northwestern University Clinical and Translational Sciences (NUCATS) Institute’s Center for Education and Career Development.

Kalhan said his team is currently validating their method to better identify patients at risk for COPD and medically attended respiratory illnesses that require healthcare contact or intervention.

“If we can do the hard work of figuring out what the causal roles of those proteins are and how they function and how this risk is conveyed, we can actually think about targets for interception of chronic lung disease before it becomes a problem,” Kalhan said.   

​This article was originally published in the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine News Center on on March 7, 2025 . ​
Ravi Kalhan, MD, MS, associate dean of Faculty Affairs, Louis A. Simpson Professor of Pulmonary Medicine, Professor of Medicine (Pulmonary and Critical Care)

​Dr. Kalhan was senior author of this study.

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