Ever since Louis Hamman and Arnold Rich described the first fatal case of pulmonary fibrosis of unknown etiology more than 80 years ago, the medical community has been challenged by the lack of effective pharmacologic therapy (1). In 2000, a panel of experts proposed idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) as a distinct lethal entity in adults (2). In 2011, more precise diagnostic criteria were described (3). For decades, patients with IPF were treated with varying doses/duration of corticosteroids and, subsequently, with the combination of prednisone plus azathioprine or cyclophosphamide. More recently, N-acetylcysteine, combined with prednisone and azathioprine, was