ABSTRACT
I. Introduction Airway remodeling is the term given to the structural changes and gross thickening that occur in the airway wall as part of the pathological processes in inflammatory chronic obstructive airway diseases, most studied in asthma and smoking-related chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). The much asked questions of whether remodeling is part of the inflammatory process, or whether it occurs as a consequence of inflammatory damage, or whether it is a separate but parallel process are probably somewhat rhetorical. All these concepts are likely to be correct to some extent in what is a complex process, involving the whole tracheobronchial tree and all layers of the airway wall. Furthermore, inevitably with such a multifaceted pathology, there will be marked individual and temporal variation as the disease progresses, with strong genetic influences (1,2).
