Because the Spearman’s rank analysis above implied that plasma YKL-40, NGAL and TSLP levels are affected by several factors, we further performed multivariate stepwise analysis to examine the effects of these independent variables age, BMI, smoke, lung function, bronchodilator response, the percent of emphysema (% LAA-950) and the studied disease categories (ACO vs. asthma, ACO vs. asthma and ACO vs. COPD) on the plasma levels of YKL-40, NGAL and TSLP (Table 4). The gene discussed is TSLP; the disease is asthma.