CCL5 and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: In this context, it is noteworthy that RANTES has been implicated in microbial translocation [57], a process known to drive systemic inflammation, as well as in the pathogenesis of COPD [58, 59] and coronary artery disease (CAD) [60–62], conditions in which smoking is well recognized as being a key risk factor, particularly in HIV-infected individuals who smoke [16, 23, 63].