HAS3 and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: Expression of HAS-3 did not differ between the groups (Fig. 1B), yet a below limit detection was observed in significantly more samples of patients with COPD (n = 80, 56.0%) than smoking controls (n = 7, 33.3%) and non-smoking controls (n = 2, 10.0%), p < 0.001.