New Insights on Antibiotic Therapy in Chronic Lung Diseases

Dear Colleagues,

Chronic non-communicable respiratory diseases are among the top ten causes of death and disability in the world. In particular, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease affects nearly 4% of the world's population, making it the third leading cause of death in the world. Asthma affects more than 350 million people worldwide and is the most common chronic childhood disease in the world. International registers document a progressive increase in the prevalence of bronchiectasis, especially non-cystic fibrosis. Despite their differences in nature, the aforementioned chronic respiratory diseases have one common denominator,  the negative impact of respiratory infections on the nature and progression of the disease.

Specifically, respiratory bacterial infections are a major cause of exacerbations for COPD, asthma and bronchiectasis.

Antibiotic use can influence the prognosis and acute exacerbation of chronic respiratory diseases, including treatment failure and hospitalization.

Appropriate antibiotic prescriptions are highly dependent on the diagnostic approaches used to identify the etiology of the infection, including traditional culture-based approaches, mass spectrometry, polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, rapid antigen detection tests and biomarker combination tests. Furthermore, research into and development of rapid molecular tests that are able to identify both pathogens and genetic determinants of antimicrobial resistance are crucial to contain the growing phenomenon of antibiotic resistance.

Antimicrobial resistance is one of the top ten global threats to public health. The difficulty in developing new antibiotic drugs is well known, with the approval of only five new classes of antibiotics that target Gram-positive bacteria in the past 20 years and fewer than 50 new antibiotics currently under clinical development.

The result is a global call for therapeutic strategies based on "traditional" and "non-traditional" antibiotics, including vaccines, antibodies, phage therapies, lysines, virulence-targeting agents, synthetic peptides and immunomodulators.

With this global approach in mind, this Special Issue seeks proposals that focus on new developments of antibiotic therapy in patients with chronic lung diseases.

Prof. Dr. Riccardo Inchingolo
Guest Editor

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• chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
• asthma
• bronchiectasis
• respiratory infections
• antibiotics
• etiologies of infections
• culture-based approaches
• mass spectrometry
• rapid antigen detection tests
• antimicrobial resistance
• vaccines
• antibodies
• lysines
• virulence-targeting agents
• synthetic peptides