Do COPD subtypes really exist? COPD heterogeneity and clustering in 10 independent cohorts

Background

COPD is a heterogeneous disease, but there is little consensus on specific definitions for COPD subtypes. Unsupervised clustering offers the promise of ‘unbiased’ data-driven assessment of COPD heterogeneity. Multiple groups have identified COPD subtypes using cluster analysis, but there has been no systematic assessment of the reproducibility of these subtypes.

Objective

We performed clustering analyses across 10...