GDF15 and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: Additionally, human epidemiology studies also indicated the correlation of serum levels of GDF-15 to markers of anorexia/cachexia syndromes through several diseases such as prostate cancer [44, 47], advanced pancreatic cancer [48], advanced esophageal squamous cell carcinoma [49], mixed populations of patients with cancer cachexia [46, 50, 51], chronic obstructive lung disease [52, 53] and intensive care associated cachexia [30].