Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) in Non-Smokers: A Different Phenotype?

Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a heterogeneous and multisystemic disease with significantly increasing morbidity and mortality.COPD is now widely accepted to have multiple phenotypes.Tobacco smoking is very well recognised risk factor of COPD (25%-45% of patients with COPD have never smoked) and the burden of non-smoker COPD is increasing.This paper review in brief COPD in non-smokers, identification of various non-smoking risk factors that have contributed immensely in the causation of COPD and phenotypic variations which includes the existing and emerging phenotypes.It will also help us in proper diagnosis and pharmacological management of nonsmoker COPD patients as their prevalence has been under-estimated.