THURSDAY, Aug. 10 (HealthDay News) -- The airway inflammation associated with chronic cough can be caused by the coughing trauma itself, according to a study published in the August issue of Chest.
Richard S. Irwin, M.D., of the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester, Mass., and colleagues evaluated 24 adult patients, including five with cough due to intrapulmonary diseases, eight with cough related to extrapulmonary diseases and 11 with unexplained cough.
Compared to control subjects, the researchers found that all patients in all three groups had minimal-to-moderate chronic inflammation. They also found no group differences in type of inflammation, cough duration or smoking history, and no histologic differences between patients with explained versus unexplained cough.
"Because the histopathologic changes associated with coughing, assessed on morphologic appearance and inflammatory cell counting in hematoxylin-eosin-prepared samples, may not necessarily be a clue to the underlying cause of chronic cough, investigators must be cautious when imputing pathogenetic importance to observed inflammatory changes in airways of coughing subjects," the authors conclude. "Our study does not support the conclusions of others that chronic lymphocytic inflammatory airway changes, all by themselves, support the diagnosis of a specific diagnosis such as unexplained cough."
Abstract
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