IL6 and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: In a prior study in our patient cohort [21], Watz et al. reported that the presence of metabolic syndrome was an independent predictor of IL-6 and hsCRP levels in COPD patients, with the levels of these markers displaying the same increasing trend with disease severity in COPD patients with and without metabolic syndrome, but being consistently higher in patients with coexisting metabolic syndrome.