Extrathoracic airway hyperresponsiveness as a mechanism of post infectious cough case report.docVIP

Cough BioMedCentral Case report Open Access Extrathoracic airway hyperresponsiveness as a mechanism of post infectious cough: case report Nicole M Ryan1,2 and Peter G Gibson*1,2 Address: 1School of Medicine and Public Health, The University of Newcastle, Callaghan, NSW 2308, Australia and 2Hunter Medical Research Institute, Department of Respiratory and Sleep Medicine, John Hunter Hospital, Locked Bag 1, Hunter Region Mail Centre, NSW, 2310, Australia Email: Nicole M Ryan - Nicole.Ryan@.au; Peter G Gibson* - Peter.Gibson@.au * Corresponding author Published: 4 August 2008 Received: 1 April 2008 Accepted: 4 August 2008 Cough 2008, 4:7 doi:10.1186/1745-9974-4-7 This article is available from: /content/4/1/7 ? 2008 Ryan and Gibson; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Post-infectious cough is a common diagnosis in people with chronic cough. However, the specific infectious aetiology and cough mechanisms are seldom identified. We report a case of chronic cough after Mycoplasma pneumoniae lower respiratory tract infection with extrathoracic airway hyperresponsiveness as the cough mechanism. Extrathoracic airway hyperresponsiveness may be a common mechanism in post-infectious cough which may be useful both diagnostically and therapeutically since chronic cough with extrathoracic airway hyperresponsiveness responds to speech pathology treatment. Background that EAHR may be a useful objective marker and relevant mechanism in post infectious cough. Post-infectious cough is a common diagnosis, especially in primary care settings, although a specific infectious aetiology is rarely confirmed. Aside from pertussis, the role of other infectious agents in chr