Nrf2 activation not only alleviates the inflammatory response of COPD by inducing HO-1 and SOD (Park et al., 2017; Sun et al., 2019), but also prevents transcriptional upregulation of proinflammatory mediators that include IL-6 induced by LPS (Kobayashi et al., 2016). Here, HMOX1 is linked to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.