What is Cough Variant Asthma

Living With Cough-variant asthma

A special kind of asthma is Cough-variant asthma (CVA). CVA is also called chronic cough because it lasts usually longer than six to eight weeks. In general, everyone can suffer from CVA but usually it is very common among young children. In comparison to real asthma, typical symptoms like shortness of breath or wheezing are missing.
The lung function and lung X-Ray function are normal. Therefore CVA is hard to detect, since the cough might be the only detectable symptom. Usually, a classical asthma detection test is used to detect CVA. During this test, the functionality of the lung is tested as well as the reaction of the body on methacholine. This special test is used to provoke the asthmatic attack. A missing reaction on the chemical might lead to the final conclusion of CVA as a medical condition.

The treatment of CVA is similar to the treatment of classic asthma; in light and normal cases patients get inhalers which support the immediate relief of the muscles in the wall of the airways. A working treatment with classical asthma medicaments strongly supports the diagnosis of CVA. Recently, it has been reported that CVA can result in a real asthma condition.

In conjunction with real asthma, the causes of CVA are still unknown. However, both diseases can be caused by the exposure to different allergens, breathing in cold air or an infection of the upper respiratory. As a side effect, CVA can occur when a patient takes Beta-blockers for the treatment of other conditions like high blood pressure, migraine or a heart failure. Since there are genetic circumstances that support the development of asthma, the probability of suffering from CVA depends on the health history of the patient’s family. CVA and asthma are more likely in families where certain members of the patient’s family are suffering from asthma.