Emerging therapies for smoke inhalation injury: a review

Background Smoke inhalation injury increases overall burn mortality by up to 20 times. Current therapy remains supportive with a failure to identify an optimal or targeted treatment protocol for smoke inhalation injury. The goal of this review is to describe emerging therapies that are being developed to treat the pulmonary pathology induced by smoke inhalation injury with or without concurrent burn injury. Main body A comprehensive literature search was performed using PubMed (1995-present) for therapies not approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) for smoke inhalation injury with or without concurrent burn injury. Therapies were divided based on therapeutic strategy. Models included inhalation alone with or without concurrent burn injury. Specific animal model, mechanism of action of medication, route of administration, therapeutic benefit, safety, mortality benefit, and efficacy were reviewed. Multiple potential therapies for smoke inhalation injury with or without burn injury are currently under investigation. These include stem cell therapy, anticoagulation therapy, selectin inhibition, inflammatory pathway modulation, superoxide and peroxynitrite decomposition, selective nitric oxide synthase inhibition, hydrogen sulfide, HMG-CoA reductase inhibition, proton pump inhibition, and targeted nanotherapies. While each of these approaches shows a potential therapeutic benefit to treating inhalation injury in animal models, further research including mortality benefit is needed to ensure safety and efficacy in humans. Conclusions Multiple novel therapies currently under active investigation to treat smoke inhalation injury show promising results. Much research remains to be conducted before these emerging therapies can be translated to the clinical arena.