With regard to the other drugs administered, there are reports of isolated cases of eosinophilia associated with parenchymal infiltrates as a consequence of rifampicin therapy [11] . There is only one reported case where clarithromycin may have led to eosinophilic pneumonia [12] , but our patient was only treated with this drug for two days. Moreover, it is possible that eosinophilic pneumonia could be an adverse reaction to smoking in predisposed subjects: this sometimes happens to patients who have recently started smoking or who have modified their 'way' of smoking (for example, increasing or changing type of smoking). Our patient, however, did not report any changes, either in quantity or in quality, in his smoking habits, so this would seem to exclude any relation to smoking [13] .