As a typical post-transcriptional regulation mechanism, we quantitatively detected miRNAs upstream of NKRF, and hsa-miR-19-3p showed a good negative correlation with NKRF protein in LC tissue of patients without COPD, which is consistent with the theory that miRNA negatively regulates gene expression at post-transcriptional level. Here, NKRF is linked to chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.