Objective: To study the causes of chronic cough in children.
Methods: Retrospective analysis was carried out on the clinical data of 132 children with chronic cough from August 2010 to September 2011.
Results: Several conditions were found to contribute to chronic cough in children, including cough variant asthma (CVA, n=56), upper airway cough syndrome (UACS, n=44), infections/postinfectious cough (IC/PIC, n=22), allergic cough (AC, n=8), gastroesophageal reflux cough (GERC, n=5), and others (n=3). There was significant difference in the distribution of IC/IPC among an infant group (<1 year), a group of young children (>1 year), a group of preschool aged children (>3 years) and a group of school-age children (6-14 years) (χ2=11.638, P=0.001), and the infant group showed a significantly higher prevalence of IC/PIC than the other three age groups (P<0.05). IC/PIC was the main cause of chronic cough in the infant group, while CVA and UACS were the main causes in each of the other groups. A relatively large proportion of AC, CVA and UACS cases had a personal history of allergy, a family history of allergy/asthma and a history of exposure to harmful environments.
Conclusions: CVA, UACS, and IC/PIC are main causes of chronic cough in children, varying among different age groups. Children with a personal history of allergy, family history of allergy/asthma and a history of exposure to harmful environment are more vulnerable to AC, CVA and UACS.