Lung and Systemic Inflammation in COPD

Nuclear factor-κB (NF-κB) is a nuclear transcription factor first recognized in 1986 by Sen and Baltimore. Its name derives from the fact that it was first diagnosed in the nuclei of B cells [13] bound to an enhancer element of the immunoglobulin kappa light chain gene [4]. At that time, NF-κB was primarily thought to be a B-cell–specific transcription factor, but it was afterward found to be present in every cell type [5]. NF-κB has been implicated in the regulation of host inflammatory [6-8] and immune responses [9-11], cell adhesion [12], developmental signals [13], cell proliferation, differentiation [14, 15] and in defending cells from apoptosis [16, 17]. In addition, it plays important roles in cellular growth properties by encoding cytokines, chemokines and receptors required for neutrophil adhesion and migration, thus increasing the expression of specific cellular genes [18].