Structural changes in the airways: cause or effect of chronic cough?

摘要: Patients with a chronic cough have asthma or "asthma-related" diagnoses such as variant non-asthmatic eosinophilic bronchitis usually responsive to inhaled corticosteroid therapy, non-asthma-related including "idiopathic" "unexplained" cases. Both of these conditions involve airway inflammation. More recently, structural changes remodeling the lower airways, which been considered characteristic classic wheezing, also demonstrated in patients cough, irrespective its cause. In this article, presence, pathogenesis, and possible consequences are reviewed. Although whether leads is cause difficult determine, concomitance both mechanisms may lead positive feedback mechanism vicious cycle persistence.