Objective: Recently, apoptosis clearance has been proposed to involve in the pathophysiology of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD).It has been suggested that Milk fat globule-EGF factor 8 (MFG-E8) promoted the engulfment of apoptotic cells, therefore, we investigated whether plasma concentration and gene polymorphisms of MFG-E8 were associated with COPD in this study.Methods:MFG-E8 rs4945 C>A and rs1878326 C>A gene polymorphisms were genotyped in cases of 236 COPD Chinese patients and 247 healthy individuals respectively with polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism (PCR-RFLP) analysis.