Year: 2025

By Wissam Chatila, MD, PhD, as told to Kara Meyer RobinsonWhen you learn you have genetic chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), the first step is to educate yourself about your diagnosis.If you have genetic COPD, also called alpha-1, it means you have low levels of alpha-1-antitrypsin (AAT). That’s a protein made in the liver that… […]

It’s not always easy to get a diagnosis of alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT) deficiency, a rare condition that sometimes leads to serious lung and liver damage. In fact, most people who have this disorder are never diagnosed at all, experts say. Also called alpha-1, this genetic condition means you don’t have enough of the alpha-1 antitrypsin protein… […]

By Tracy Winn, as told to Kara Meyer RobinsonI was a wheezy sort of kid who got tired easily and seemed to catch every passing virus. It ran in my family. I remember one day my pediatrician sat me on his table and said, “Oh, you poor thing. You have asthma.”Asthma might have been part of… […]

May 5, 2023 — Aryn Thirp, a 35-year-old mother and blogger from South Jordan, UT, knew something had to change last year when she saw the numbers in her lab results: her cholesterol and triglycerides, a type of fat found in the blood, were both twice as high as they should have been. Thirp has hormonal imbalances… […]

Smoking is the leading cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), but it’s not the only cause. Nearly 1 in 3 people with this lung disease have never smoked. Some were exposed to pollution and other irritants in the air. And about 2% inherited a rare condition called alpha-1 antitrypsin (AAT) deficiency. Most people with AAT… […]