Drug Shields Mice From Emphysema

"Future studies will be done in COPD patients to test the strategy of targeting Nrf2, to test the efficacy in reducing the burden of this debilitating disease," Biswal said.

However, Dr. Bartolome R. Celli, chief of pulmonary care at St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Boston, said the jury is still out on the effectiveness of this approach.

"It is an interesting and intriguing study," Celli said. "However, from the experiments in mice to reality in humans there usually is a great distance," he said.

There is consensus that oxidative stress associated with cigarette smoking is important in COPD, so balancing oxidative stress with antioxidants makes sense, Celli said.

"This study takes it one step further by testing the hypothesis in vivo [animals]," according to Celli. "Let's wait for the translation into humans," he said.

More information

For more information on emphysema, visit the U.S. National Library of Medicine .

SOURCES: Shyam Biswal, Ph.D., associate professor, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore; Bartolome R. Celli, M.D., chief, pulmonary care, St. Elizabeth's Medical Center, Boston; Norman Edelman, M.D., chief medical officer, American Lung Association; Dec. 22-26, 2008, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, online