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Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a leading cause of death worldwide, with a continually rising mortality rate. As COPD is driven by abnormal pulmonary and systemic inflammation, Toll-like receptors (TLRs) seem to be important. TLRs play a key role in innate response, and in particular TLR2 gene polymorphisms Arg677Trp and Arg753Gln have been linked to an increased risk of infection. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether there is a link between polymorphisms in TLR2 and the onset or course of COPD. We analyzed 149 Caucasian COPD patients and 150 healthy individuals by using polymerase chain reaction (PCR) followed by restriction fragment length polymorphism (RFLP) analysis. To further characterize the disease, patients were classified according to GOLD and divided into two subgroups comprising a stable (60/149) course and an unstable (89/149) course …