ABSTRACT
Since COPD is now defined, in part, by the presence of persistent inflammatory changes within the lung,1 it is no surprise that suppression or elimination of these changes has been extensively studied. Any therapy, which leads to the removal of or reduction in exposure to a proinflammatory stimulus, could be considered to be an ‘antiinflammatory’. Thus smoking cessation, however induced, would meet this criterion although inflammation does persist even when this is done, at least in COPD patients with established physiological abnormalities.2 In practice, most attention has focused on the suppression of chronic inflammation and whether corticosteroids administered either orally or by inhalation can achieve this.
