TY - JOUR T1 - Treating acute cough: wet <em>versus</em> dry – have we got the paradigm wrong? JF - ERJ Open Research JO - erjor DO - 10.1183/23120541.00055-2015 VL - 1 IS - 2 SP - 00055-2015 AU - Alyn H. Morice AU - Ahmad Kantar AU - Peter V. Dicpinigaitis AU - Surinder S. Birring AU - Lorcan P. McGarvey AU - Kian Fan Chung Y1 - 2015/10/01 UR - http://openres.ersjournals.com/content/1/2/00055-2015.abstract N2 - Over-the-counter (OTC) medicines are relied on by millions of patients worldwide to provide relief from acute cough, which is almost exclusively caused by acute viral upper respiratory tract infection (URTI). The worldwide market for such medicines is enormous, amounting to €5.77 billion in 2014 (source: IMS Health, Danbury, CT, USA). Doubts have been expressed as to the efficacy of these drugs [1], and there is no doubt that simple measures used in proprietary and home remedies can have significant benefit through a poorly defined “demulcent” effect. However, significant additional benefit from pharmacotherapy can also be demonstrated [2].It is time to abandon the dry/wet classification of acute cough due to URTI http://ow.ly/Sfc1X ER -