Researchers present their latest findings on combatting chronic coughs.

A cough is a troublesome symptom of respiratory disease and the most common reason people visit their doctor, yet there is currently no effective treatment. The therapies currently available to treat the cough either have limited effectiveness or potentially harmful side effects. Two members of the National, Heart and Lung Institute’s Pharmacology and Toxicology section recently attended MRC’s ‘Combat my Cough’ held in Manchester, where patients are given the opportunity to keep up to date with research on the cough.  The chronic cough clinic in Manchester is one of five specialist chronic cough clinics in England, where they are trying to find a cure.  

A cough is normally a protective reflex that helps rid our lungs of anything harmful, but with disease the cough can become repetitive and excessive, greatly impacting a person’s life.  Ryan Robinson and Dr Michael Wortley attended ‘Combat my Cough’ to share their research in this area with patients.  Both of the talks were extremely well received by the attendees one of whom commented, “The research team from Imperial College were a welcome addition… having the guys actually involved presenting was particularly interesting”.

Ryan gave a talk on air pollution and sensory nerves based on his PhD research into the effects of diesel exhaust on sensory nerves, and how it might worsen the effects of underlying respiratory disease. Ryan remarked that "The Combat My Cough meeting was a fantastic opportunity to engage with patients who can directly benefit from our work. I particularly enjoyed the questions and comments that came from the audience after giving my talk on air pollution, as it reinforced the idea that poor air quality is something that many of us are concerned about. In general, spending time with those who have had their lives burdened by cough helped to remind us of the context of our research and its importance".

Chronic cough patients by definition have had a cough for more than 8 weeks, but many of the patients attending clinics at the North West Lung Centre’s specialist cough clinic have suffered with chronic cough for many years. In a recent paper the Imperial team have been trying to better understand what triggers the cough reflex in patients with a chronic condition.  The activation of ion channels on the sensory nerve endings that are found in your airways cause the cough reflex.  These channels include ones designed to react to changes in the outside environment called transient receptor potential (TRP) channels.  People with diseased airways tend to have more substances present that would activate these channels, leading to a cough reflex, and a patient with airway disease may have a greater number of the channels.  These findings support the idea that developing treatments that interact with these TRP channels may be a possible way of combatting a chronic cough.

Dr Mike Wortley gave a talk on ‘Airway Nerves in Chronic Cough’ based on his research aiming to understand the mechanisms leading to chronic cough, and to help pre-clinical development of new therapies. He explained the basics of the cough reflex, and then gave an overview of their research including their collaborative work on looking at the effects of how the cough reflex may become more exaggerated in certain types of lung diseases such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.

Mike said about the event, “As basic science researchers we don’t always have the chance to meet with and connect the research we do to patients. Talking to the patients on the day it reinforced the socially restrictive nature of chronic cough, and how it affects the everyday lives of the people we met”.  This annual event is organised by the North West Lung Centre Charity of the University Hospital of South Manchester.