IL6 and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease: Compared with CRP, PTX3 more faithfully reflects local inflammatory activity, and its covalently stabilized multimeric architecture is conducive to assay consistency and interpretability (59).Inflammatory dysregulation related to COPD promotes M2 anti-inflammatory polarization (60), reducing TNF-α, IL-1β, IL-6, and IL-8 secretion and impairing antifungal defense.