• Interstitial fibrosis

Understanding the mechanisms of fibrotic lung disorders, either idiopathic or associated with a specific aetiology, is the subject a huge scientific effort in the world, sustained by both the academic pulmonary community and by pharmaceutical companies. The ultimate aim is clearly to identify one or more drugs that will have the capacity to inhibit the decline of lung function and improve survival. Such ambitious goals are unlikely to be reached from one day to another. Rather, we may expect small improvements, perhaps in subgroups of patients, which will add to improve globally the prognosis of this disease process. In the modern era of medicine, in a time in which the transmission of information is rapid and global, such a slow pace of evolution is difficult to accept and certainly contributes to the sense of nihilism sometimes affecting the respiratory community at large, including clinicians, patients and their families, who are challenging fibrotic lung disorders.

This negative feeling is also fuelled by the litany of clinical trials in patients with idiopathic pulmonary …