Volume 148, Issue 6, Pages 1497-1507 (December 2015) COPD Exacerbations Are Associated With Proinflammatory Degradation of Hyaluronic Acid  Eleni Papakonstantinou, MD, PhD, Michael Roth, PhD, Ioannis Klagas, PhD, George Karakiulakis, MD, PhD, Michael Tamm, MD, Daiana Stolz, MD  CHEST  Volume 148, Issue 6, Pages 1497-1507 (December 2015) DOI: 10.1378/chest.15-0153 Copyright © 2015 The American College of Chest Physicians Terms and Conditions

Figure 1 A-C, HA (A), HA synthase-1 (B), and hyaluronidase (C) in BAL of patients with COPD as measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay. Depicted is the representative distribution of values among various patients. The mean and median values, SEM, and SD of these measurements are shown in Table 4. HA = hyaluronic acid. CHEST 2015 148, 1497-1507DOI: (10.1378/chest.15-0153) Copyright © 2015 The American College of Chest Physicians Terms and Conditions

Figure 2 Enzymatic activity of HYAL in BAL. HA zymography of BAL and quantitation of the lysis bands are shown. Bars represent mean ± SEM of zymograms from BAL samples obtained from 54 patients with stable COPD and 43 patients with acute exacerbation of COPD. ***P ≤.001. HYAL = hyaluronidase. See Figure 1 legend for expansion of other abbreviation. CHEST 2015 148, 1497-1507DOI: (10.1378/chest.15-0153) Copyright © 2015 The American College of Chest Physicians Terms and Conditions

Figure 3 Analysis of the MW of HA. Electrophoresis of BAL samples containing 8 μg HA on 0.9% agarose gels. Gels stained with Stains-All (Sigma-Aldrich Co LLC). MW = molecular weight. See Figure 1 legend for expansion of other abbreviation. CHEST 2015 148, 1497-1507DOI: (10.1378/chest.15-0153) Copyright © 2015 The American College of Chest Physicians Terms and Conditions