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Treatment of stable COPD: antioxidants

CORRESPONDENCE: W. MacNee, ELEGI, Colt Research Laboratories, Wilkie Building, Medical School, Teviot Place, Edinburgh EH8 9AG, Scotland. Fax: 44 1316511558. E-mail: w.macnee@ed.ac.uk

There is considerable evidence that an increased oxidative burden occurs in the lungs of patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) and this results in an imbalance between oxidants/antioxidants or oxidative stress, which may play a role in many of the processes involved in the pathogenesis of COPD. These include enhanced proteolytic activity, mucus hypersecretion and the enhanced inflammatory response in the lungs to inhaling tobacco smoke, which is characteristic of COPD. COPD is now recognised to have multiple systemic consequences, such as weight loss and skeletal muscle dysfunction. It is now thought that oxidative stress may extend beyond the lungs and is involved in these systemic effects.

Antioxidant therapy therefore would seem to be a logical therapeutic approach in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. There is a need for more potent antioxidant therapies to test the hypothesis that antioxidant drugs may be a new therapeutic strategy for the prevention and treatment of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

KEYWORDS: Antioxidants, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, oxidative stress