Cough: Citric acid and nerves

Abstract

Cough is often associated with inflammatory airway disease and is an unmet clinical need. To provide successful future therapies, good disease models are required. Citric acid has been used to provoke cough in humans and to induce cough in guinea pigs and the responses in guinea pig are similar to those in human. Citric acid-induced cough provides a reliable disease model with which to study the mechanisms involved in cough and to evaluate novel therapies.