ABSTRACT
The acute respiratory distress syndrome (ARDS) remains a challenge to clinicians and basic scientists alike. Although progress has been made in management, resulting in improved survival (1), the development of effective pharmacological agents to block the basic mechanisms involved in the inflammatory process, which underlies the clinical syndrome, resulting in acute respiratory failure and often multiorgan system failure, remains to be accomplished. This is due in large part to the multiplicity of mechanisms, often redundant, that promote the inflammatory cascade (2).
