of a pulmonary disease or to arrest the decline of a function such as lung function the pde4 inhibitor useful in this invention may be any compound that is known to inhibit the pde4 enzyme or which is discovered to act in as pde4 inhibitor and which are only pde4 inhibitors not compounds which inhibit other members of the pde family as well as pde4 generally it is preferred to use a pde4 antagonists which has an ic 50 ratio of about 0 1 or greater as regards the ic 50 for the pde iv catalytic form which binds rolipram with a high affinity divided by the ic 50 for the form which binds rolipram with a low affinity pde inhibitors used in treating inflammation and as bronchodilators drugs like theophylline and pentoxyfyllin inhibit pde isozymes indiscriminently in all tissues these compounds exhibit side effects apparently because they non selectively inhibit all 5 pde isozyme classes in all tissues the targeted disease state may be effectively treated by such compounds but unwanted secondary effects may be exhibited which if they could be avoided or minimized would increase the overall therapeutic effect of this approach to treating certain disease states for example clinical studies with the selective pde 4 inhibitor rolipram which was being developed as an antidepressant indicate it has psychotropic activity and produces gastrointestinal effects e g pyrosis nausea and emesis it turns out that there are at least two binding forms on human monocyte recombinant pde 4 hpde 4 at which inhibitors bind one explanation for these observations is that hpde 4 exists in two distinct forms one binds the likes of rolipram.