Establishing the role of autophagy in COPD and exploring new gene-based treatment approaches, the scientists have identified 19 autophagy-related differentially expressed genes that participated in the disease and also found that among them BCL2 was strongly correlated with the lung function. In a recent study carried out by researchers from the Cheeloo College of Medicine, Shandong University, and  Jinan Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital, Jinan, China, they collected blood sample data from the Gene Expression Omnibus (GEO) database to observe 41 differentially expressed miRNAs and 10 significantly different transcription factors along with 19 autophagy-related differentially expressed genes that participated in COPD. These findings however reconfirms that autophagy takes part in the occurrence of COPD and further studies can prove that miRNAs and lncRNAs play a role and act as biomarkers to diagnose and evaluate the prognosis.