Sign In
Australia; NSW; VIC; QLD; TAS; NT
Media release
From:
Summary:
This study, published in The Lancet Respiratory Medicine, explored different types of coughs among middle-aged people – including minimal cough, cough with colds only, cough with allergies, intermittent productive cough, chronic dry cough and chronic productive cough.
It found that different types of coughs might need different kinds of treatment.
For example, if you have a cough with mucus, regularly checking lung function could be beneficial in catching any issues early.
This is because the study found that people who cough with mucus (intermittent or chronic productive cough), no matter a chronic or non-chronic one, tended to have more problems with their lungs and more coughs and allergies from a young age.
This highlights the early life origins of an adult cough.
This research also helps doctors, especially GPs, to understand that not all coughs are the same and the specific type of cough should be considered when deciding how to treat it. This is particularly important for Australia, given its high prevalence of chronic cough, and cough is the leading reason people visit their GPs.
Key points:
- A chronic productive cough – defined as usually cough with phlegm for more than 3 months – was found to be the most clinically impactful in the study, associated with the highest prevalence of co-morbidities including COPD, asthma, CRS, obstructive sleep apnoea. This ‘cough subclass’ had the highest prevalence of asthma since age seven.
This group also had the highest exposure to active and passive smoking at all ages. These findings suggest that both smoking and early-life airway diseases (e.g., asthma) may contribute to the impaired lung function in the “chronic productive cough” subclass and potentially to the development of COPD in later life. Further analysis would be important here.
Methodology points:
- Data collected by the Tasmanian Longitudinal Health Study (TAHS), a community based cohort study following participants from age 7 to 53
- 3609 participants completed the questionnaire
Future research
The researchers suggest future studies may further explore the roles of early-life factors (asthma and allergies, productive cough (cough with phlegm during early life), and active/passive smoking) as potential longitudinal treatable traits for primary prevention of future cough.
