Type 2 Inflammation of the Lower Airways: impacts on the Laryngopharynx
Asthma affect up to one fifth of the general population[32 ], characterized by airway hyper responsiveness and reversible pulmonary function impairments on spirometry[33 ]. Classical lower airway symptoms including cough, wheezing, and dyspnoea. Non-asthma variants also characterised by lower airway eosinophilia have been identified, including cough-variant asthma (CVA) and non-asthma eosinophilic bronchitis (NAEB), also termed atopic cough (AC). In CVA, patients present with cough but no airway limiting symptoms, and reversible pulmonary function impairments[33 ]. In NAEB/AC, chronic cough with sputum and bronchial eosinophilia [34 ] occurs without the pulmonary function impairments seen in asthma and CVA. In these disorders, cough is a primary symptom related to lower airway type 2 inflammation, and thus is excluded from our analysis inTable 1 . The prevalence of non-cough UCTS in lower airway were infrequently reported, and available data predominantly concerns studies of asthma patients, with most attention given to voice related complaints. In general, data presented in Table 1 re-iterates a view that non-cough symptoms are more prevalent in populations with lower airway allergy.