It showed a moderate reproducibility as shown in figure 1 I. Confounder analysis revealed that higher serum vWF levels in COPD patients could not be explained by changed covariates (FEV1 or pack-years, ANCOVA p-values for all confounders <0.01) and no significant association between smoking and vWF levels was found in the ARIC study [24]. Here, VWF is linked to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.