About the Authors

Tanja Lucke

Contributed equally to this work with: Tanja Lucke, Ronald Herrera

tanja.lucke@med.uni-muenchen.de

Affiliations Institute and Outpatient Clinic for Occupational, Social and Environmental Medicine, University Hospital LMU Munich, München, Germany, Comprehensive Pneumology Center Munich, DZL, German Center for Lung Research, München, Germany

Ronald Herrera

Contributed equally to this work with: Tanja Lucke, Ronald Herrera

Affiliations Institute and Outpatient Clinic for Occupational, Social and Environmental Medicine, University Hospital LMU Munich, München, Germany, Center for International Health, Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich, München, Germany

Margarethe Wacker

Affiliation German Research Center for Environmental Health, Institute of Health Economics and Health Care Management, Member of the German Center for Lung Research, Comprehensive Pneumology Center Munich (CPC-M), Neuherberg, Germany

Rolf Holle

Affiliation German Research Center for Environmental Health, Institute of Health Economics and Health Care Management, Member of the German Center for Lung Research, Comprehensive Pneumology Center Munich (CPC-M), Neuherberg, Germany

Frank Biertz

Affiliation Institute for Biostatistics, Hannover Medical School, Hannover, Germany

Dennis Nowak

Affiliations Institute and Outpatient Clinic for Occupational, Social and Environmental Medicine, University Hospital LMU Munich, München, Germany, Comprehensive Pneumology Center Munich, DZL, German Center for Lung Research, München, Germany

Rudolf M. Huber

Affiliations Comprehensive Pneumology Center Munich, DZL, German Center for Lung Research, München, Germany, Thoracic Oncology Center Munich (TOM), University Hospital LMU Munich, München, Germany

Sandra Söhler

Affiliation Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, University Medical Centre Giessen and Marburg, Philipps-University, Marburg, Germany

Claus Vogelmeier

Affiliation Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine, Department of Medicine, University Medical Centre Giessen and Marburg, Philipps-University, Marburg, Germany

Joachim H. Ficker

Affiliations Department of Respiratory Medicine, Allergology and Sleep Medicine, Klinikum Nuremberg, Nürnberg, Germany, Paracelsus Medical University Nuremberg, Nürnberg, Germany

Harald Mückter

Affiliation Walther-Straub-Institute for Pharmacology and Toxicology, Ludwig-Maximilian University Munich, München, Germany

Rudolf A. Jörres

Affiliations Institute and Outpatient Clinic for Occupational, Social and Environmental Medicine, University Hospital LMU Munich, München, Germany, Comprehensive Pneumology Center Munich, DZL, German Center for Lung Research, München, Germany

COSYCONET-Consortium

Membership of the COSYCONET-Consortium is listed in the Supporting Information (S1 COSYCONET Consortium).

Competing Interests

The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization: TL R. Herrera MW HM RAJ. Formal analysis: TL R. Herrera RAJ. Investigation: TL R. Herrera HM RAJ. Methodology: TL R. Herrera MW HM RAJ. Resources: SS DN RMH MW R. Holle FB CV. Software: TL R. Herrera. Supervision: DN RMH CV JHF RAJ. Validation: FB. Visualization: TL. Writing – original draft: TL RAJ. Writing – review & editing: MW R. Holle FB DN RMH SS CV JHF.