Abstract
It has been postulated that some children with recurrent cough but no wheeze have a mild form of asthma (cough variant asthma), with similar risk factors and an increased risk of future wheeze.
This longitudinal study compared risk factors for isolated night cough and for wheeze in the Leicester Respiratory Cohort in children aged 1, 4, 6 and 9 years and compared prognosis of children with isolated night cough, children with wheeze and asymptomatic children.
We included 4101 children aged 1 year, 2854 aged 4 years, 2369 aged 6 years and 1688 aged 9 years. The prevalence of isolated night cough was 10% at age 1 year and 18% in older children. Prevalence of wheeze decreased from 35% at 1 year to 13% at 9 years. Although several risk factors were similar for cough and wheeze, day care, reflux and family history of bronchitis were more strongly associated with cough, and male sex and family history of asthma with wheeze. Over one-third of preschool children with cough continued to cough at school age, but their risk of developing wheeze was similar to that of children who were asymptomatic at earlier surveys. Wheeze tracked more strongly throughout childhood than cough.
In conclusion, our study showed that only some risk factors for cough and wheeze were shared but many were not, and there was little evidence for an increased risk of future wheeze in children with isolated night cough. This provides little support for the hypothesis that recurrent cough without wheeze may indicate a variant form of asthma.
Abstract
Children with isolated night cough do not have an increased risk of future wheeze, and risk factors for cough and wheeze only partially overlap. https://bit.ly/31IbXSC
Footnotes
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Author contributions: C.E. Kuehni is the guarantor of the integrity of this work. All authors have revised the article for important intellectual content and finally approved of the version to be published, as well as agreed to be accountable for all aspects of the work. Conception and design: C.E. Kuehni and M. Jurca. Data acquisition: C.E. Kuehni and E.A. Gaillard. Data analysis: M. Jurca and B.D. Spycher. Interpretation of data: C.E. Kuehni, M. Jurca and M. Goutaki. Drafting the article: M. Jurca and C.E. Kuehni. Clinical input: E.A. Gaillard and P. Latzin.
Conflict of interest: M. Jurca has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: M. Goutaki has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: P. Latzin has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: E.A. Gaillard has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: B.D. Spycher has nothing to disclose.
Conflict of interest: C.E. Kuehni has nothing to disclose.
Support statement: All phases of this study were supported by the Swiss National Science Foundation (grants SNF PDFMP3 137033, 32003B_162820, 32003B_144068 and PZ00P3_147987) and Asthma UK (07/048). Funding information for this article has been deposited with the Crossref Funder Registry.
- Received April 26, 2020.
- Accepted June 30, 2020.
- Copyright ©ERS 2020
This article is open access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Licence 4.0.