Effect of Althaea Officinalis on Cough Associated with ACE Inhibitors

Abstract

Nowadays Angiotensin- converting enzyme inhibitor drugs are the leading drugs for the treatment of hypertension, heart failure and some of nephropathy. But One of the most frequent side effect of these drugs is cough. A dry, tickly and often bothersome cough that may develop in around 15 to 39 percent of these patients and may lead to discontinuation of treatment. So we decided to use herbal drug of althaea officinalis for the treatment of this cough. For this study in the year 1385 and by using of method of double-blind clinical trial 60 patients with hypertension who were from the province of Chaharmal va bakhtiarei and had been developed cough during taking of angiotensin - converting enzyme inhibitor drugs were selected. Then for all of them were filled a paper of questionnaire. In these papers the scores of severity of their cough on a scale between 0 to 4 and the advantages of their spirometery tests were noted. Then all of these patients were divided in 2 groups. The first group was treated by herbal drug of althaea officinalis and the second group by placebo by 20 drops for every 8 hour (TDS). These patients used these drugs for treatment period of 4 weeks. At the end of 4 weeks the scores of severity of their cough with the advantages of their spirometery tests were noted again. The Mean scores of the severity of the cough in the first group which have been treated by althaea officinalis had a significant change from the score of) 2/66+0.958 (to) 1/23+1.006 (Eight patient in the althaea officinalis group showed almost complete cough abolition. No significant change in laboratory data related to spirometery tests were observed in either group. The mechanism of this type of cough maybe is related to the stimulation of tracheae-bronchial tree and the herbal drug of althaea officinalis can have important role in decreasing and treatment of the cough of ACEI drugs. © Asian Network for Scientific Information, 2007.