D: Can pulmonary fibrosis be prevented?

Pulmonary fibrosis cannot yet be prevented, but early treatment can help slow the disease. When it is linked to autoimmune conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, treating the underlying illness may reduce further lung damage. Medicines such as Nintedanib and Pirfenidone can slow progression, while healthy habits – including staying active and eating well – support overall wellbeing.

 

🎥 Watch the Video: Can pulmonary fibrosis be prevented?

 

Professor Porter discusses the following:

• Can pulmonary fibrosis be prevented?
• Can you slow down the decline of pulmonary fibrosis?
• Can treating the cause-disease help pulmonary fibrosis?
• Can you reverse pulmonary fibrosis?
• What is progressive pulmonary fibrosis?
• Can you slow down the progress of PPF?

 

Full Video Transcript

This is an area of enormous interest. At the moment, we have no way to prevent pulmonary fibrosis. But what we can do is we can slow it down. So, if we know that somebody has pulmonary fibrosis because of ongoing inflammation secondary to another autoimmune rheumatic disease, such as rheumatoid arthritis, then we know that treating the underlying autoimmune disease can help prevent the pulmonary fibrosis and may even reverse it.

However, if the fibrosis is established and it is progressing, we call this progressive pulmonary fibrosis. (There are a lot of nomenclature here.) And, in these cases of progressive pulmonary fibrosis (or PPE), what we hope to do is slow down the progression. It’s unlikely that we will halt it with our current drugs and treatments. But what we know is some of the treatments we have available, Nintedanib and Pirfenidone, will slow down the progression of the disease. We also know that actually staying healthy, using your lungs, taking exercise, eating a healthy diet, maintaining a healthy weight – all of these – we hope will slow down the progression of the disease.

 

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[Video published December 2025]