Ellingsen J, Johansson G, Larsson K, et al. - Researchers examined if commonly used drugs, comorbidities, and mortality are related in Swedish real-world primary care chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) patients. They used primary care records and mandatory Swedish national registers and included 17,745 COPD patients; of these 5,776 (32.5%) died during the observation period (1999– 2009). An increased risk of death was observed in correlation with heart failure, stroke, and myocardial infarction underscoring the importance of timely recognition and treatment of comorbidities. Among COPD patients, they observed a dose-dependent association of use of inhaled corticosteroids, beta-blockers, and acetylsalicylic acid with a reduced risk of death, whereas an increased risk of death was observed in dose-dependent association with the use of long-acting muscarinic antagonists and N-acetylcysteine.