Editorial: COPD: The end of the beginning ||FREE PAPER||

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Authors: Richard Russell, Dave Singh, Irfan Rahman, Alan J Crockett

Published Date April 2006 Volume 2006:1(1) Pages 1 - 1

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.2147/COPD.S

Richard Russell¹, Dave Singh², Irfan Rahman³, Alan J Crockett⁴

¹Wexham Park Hospital, Berkshire, UK; ²Manchester University Hospitals Trust, Manchester, UK; ³University of Rochester Medical Center, Rochester, NY, USA; ⁴Department of General Practice, University of Adelaide, Adelaide, SA, Australia

After the Battle of El Alamein Winston Churchill said “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning”. This is perhaps an apt quotation to use about the state of knowledge of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Never before has there been so much focus on this common, chronic, and terrible disease, which fills clinics and hospital beds every winter and causes enormous morbidity and increasing mortality. At every level in the healthcare community around the world there is interest in this problem leading to increased research funding and output as well as increasing pressure on governments to legislate against smoking. Global pharmaceutical companies are now investing heavily in target and drug discovery for COPD, and an increasing number of candidate compounds are being tested.