Commentary

Idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis: an epithelial/fibroblastic cross-talk disorder

Rakesh K Kumar

Department of Pathology, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia 2052

author email corresponding author email

Respiratory Research 2002, 3:31doi:10.1186/rr198

Published:	23 December 2002

First paragraph (this article has no abstract)

The recent review by Selman and Pardo in this journal [1] correctly points out that in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) there is insufficient evidence to suggest that chronic inflammation plays a primary role in pathogenesis and that animal experimental models of pulmonary fibrosis therefore do not model IPF particularly accurately. However, the suggestion in the accompanying commentary by Gauldie and colleagues [2] that this "suggests a new hypothesis for the aetiology of this progressive and usually fatal disease" seems to be stretching the point.