Prolonged Dry Cough without Pulmonary Changes on Radiological Imaging.

Prolonged Dry Cough without Pulmonary Changes on Radiological Imaging. Intern Med. 2017 Dec 27;: Authors: Kondo T, Ohira Y, Uehara T, Noda K, Tsukamoto T, Ikusaka M Abstract A 16-year-old boy who was a non-smoker presented with a prolonged severe dry cough and malaise of 3 months in duration. Despite an increase in the patient's inflammatory marker levels, no respiratory lesions were radiologically or serologically detected. We suspected that the cough reflex pathway had been stimulated by large vessel vasculitis (a non-respiratory inflammatory condition) and diagnosed the patient with Takayasu arteritis. While inflammation of either the ascending pharyngeal or pulmonary artery have been reported to cause cough in patients with large vessel vasculitis, the present case shows that intense inflammation of the aortic arch and the starting portion of its main branches may stimulate a vagus nerve branch as a novel mechanism causing cough. PMID: 29279466 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]
Source: Internal Medicine - Category: Internal Medicine Tags: Intern Med Source Type: research