"COPD is the only cause of death that is rising in the U.S. and in the world," says Dr. Bartolome Celli, chief of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Caritas St. Elizabeth's Medical Center in Boston. It ranks as the fourth-leading cause of death in the U.S. and is expected to be No. 3 in the U.S. and worldwide by 2020.

In the U.S., even teenage smokers show "unmistakable evidence" of early COPD, says Dr. Donald Tashkin, a professor of medicine and specialist in pulmonary critical care at UCLA, citing data from lung function tests and autopsies of teens who died in car crashes.

A totally different approach is to use anti-inflammatory drugs such as the inhaled corticosteroids Budesonide, Fluticasone and Beclomethasone. Yet another approach is to use antioxidants, which combat the dangerous free radicals triggered by inflammation. One antioxidant drug (N-acetylcysteine) has been shown to be helpful in European studies but is not approved for use in COPD in the U.S. yet. There's also a five-center study underway to determine whether some forms of retinoid (vitamin A) can induce new lung tissue growth in people, as it does in rats.