Summary: Peripheral pharmacology of cough

Hypersensitivity of the 'cough receptors' is one of the primary causes of uncontrollable and nonproductive cough. These receptors are therefore the logical targets in developing antitussive therapeutics. The articles in this section focus primarily on the types of lung afferents mediating the cough reflexes and the mechanisms involved in regulating the activity and sensitivity of these afferents. Several major issues have been discussed in these presentations, including the pharmacologic, physiologic and neurochemical characteristics of the cough receptors; the effect of phenotypic switch of the rapidly adapting receptors (RARs) during chronic airway infection; the interaction between RARs and C-fiber afferents both at the receptor level and in the centrally mediated reflex pathway; and the cellular mechanisms and ion channel species involved in the hypersensitivity of the cough receptors. A number of important questions have emerged from these investigations. Answers to these questions should further advance our understanding of the peripheral mechanisms of cough reflexes.