in the Evaluation of COPD Longitudinally to Identify Predictive Surrogate End-points (ECLIPSE) Study [14]. We addressed two hypotheses: (1) eQTL analysis will improve understanding of previously known COPD susceptibility loci, such as chromosome 15q25; and (2) eQTL SNPs can be used to identify novel COPD susceptibility genes. Limiting the search to functional eQTL SNPs can reduce the multiple testing burden found in traditional GWAS. Although eQTL studies have now been performed in several human tissues besides blood, our study represents one of the first integrative genomics analyses performed in affected patients in order to gain insights into a common disease.
