Pharmacology and Therapeutics of Cough

The last decade or so has seen remarkable advances in our knowledge of cough. This applies especially to its basic mechanisms: the types of airway sensors, the phar- cological receptors on their membranes, the brainstem organization of the ‘cough centre’, and the involvement of the cerebral cortex in the sensations and the vol- tary control of cough. With the exception of the last of these, nearly all the studies have been on experimental animals rather than humans, for obvious reasons. One grou