Mucoactive agents for airway mucus hypersecretory diseases

Airway mucus hypersecretion is a feature of a number of severe respiratory diseases, including asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), and cystic fibrosis (CF). However, each disease has a different airway inflammatory response, with consequent, and presumably linked, mucus hypersecretory phenotype. Thus, it is possible that optimal treatment of the mucus hypersecretory element of each disease should be disease-specific. Nevertheless, mucoactive drugs are a longstanding and popular therapeutic option, and numerous compounds (eg, N-acetylcysteine, erdosteine, and ambroxol) are available for clinical use worldwide. However, rational recommendation of these drugs in guidelines for management of asthma, COPD, or CF has been hampered by lack of information from well-designed clinical trials. In addition, the mechanism of action of most of these drugs is unknown. Consequently, although it is possible to categorize them according to putative mechanisms of action, as expectorants (aid and/or induce cough), mucolytics (thin mucus), mucokinetics (facilitate cough transportability), and mucoregulators (suppress mechanisms underlying chronic mucus hypersecretion, such as glucocorticosteroids), it is likely that any beneficial effects are due to activities other than, or in addition to, effects on mucus. It is also noteworthy that the mucus factors that favor mucociliary transport (eg, thin mucus gel layer, "ideal" sol depth, and elasticity greater than viscosity) are opposite to those that favor cough effectiveness (thick mucus layer, excessive sol height, and viscosity greater than elasticity), which indicates that different mucoactive drugs would be required for treatment of mucus obstruction in proximal versus distal airways, or in patients with an impaired cough reflex. With the exception of mucoregulatory agents, whose primary action is unlikely to be directed against mucus, well-designed clinical trials are required to unequivocally determine the effectiveness, or otherwise, of expectorant, mucolytic, and mucokinetic agents in airway diseases in which mucus hypersecretion is a pathophysiological and clinical issue. It is noteworthy that, of the more complex molecules in development, it is simple inhaled hypertonic saline that is currently receiving the greatest attention as a mucus therapy, primarily in CF.