Cough suppression therapy: Does it work?

Treatment of Unexplained Chronic Cough

“…20 Six potentially relevant systematic reviews were identified; five met the inclusion criteria, and one was excluded because it was a narrative review. 21 No relevant guidelines were identified. This technique resulted in the inclusion of five systematic reviews and 11 RCTs, which journal.publications.chestnet.org assessed a variety of interventions for UCC, refractory cough, or idiopathic cough (Table 2).…”

Management of chronic refractory cough

“…The mean LCQ score was 12.3 (standard deviation 2.5) points at baseline, 13.3 (2.7) on placebo, and 15.5 (2.7) on morphine (P<0.01 v baseline and P<0.02 v placebo). 52 There was no significant difference in geometric mean of citric acid challenge 91 (74) mmol/L at baseline versus 127 (160) mmol/L on placebo and 220 (334) mmol/L on morphine. Morphine was well tolerated and no patient dropped out because of adverse events.…”

“…74 The review included one single blinded randomized controlled trial, 29 three prospective noncomparison studies, [75][76][77] and one retrospective review. 78 Meta-analysis was not possible so the included studies are discussed separately below.…”

Cough hypersensitivity syndrome: clinical measurement is the key to progress

“…Indeed, not only does patient-reported chronic cough correlate poorly with cough reflex sensitivity to inhaled capsaicin or citric acid (as acknowledged by the task force [1]), it also correlates only moderately with objectively measured cough frequency [2]. Patient-reported cough improves with placebo (as in randomised controlled trials of proton pump inhibitors [1]) and behavioural training [3]. It can also improve spontaneously, despite a long duration and failed trials of treatment [4].…”