About NEUROCOUGH

The NEw Understanding in the tReatment Of COUGH (NEUROCOUGH) Clinical Research Collaboration is a novel partnership between clinicians, scientists, patients and industry. Funded by the European Respiratory Society and contributions from five industry partners, NEUROCOUGH is working towards a shared vision to advance clinical management of chronic cough throughout Europe, enhance research capability and generate a framework for clinical trials.

Chronic cough

Chronic cough is a common and troublesome clinical problem and currently there are no effective treatments. While individual specialist cough clinics have been set up in some European countries, there is no formal mechanism to develop common management approaches. Furthermore, the vast majority of clinical trials of novel anti-tussive treatments have been conducted in a limited number of sites in the United Kingdom and United States of America with little in the way of cough clinical trial infrastructure across Europe. NEUROCOUGH seeks to address this through creating a platform that allows clinicians, together with researchers in academia and industrial partners, to exchange ideas and facilitate collaborations geared towards improved care and treatment for patients with cough. NEUROCOUGH will place Europe at the forefront of clinical improvements in chronic cough and provide a strong platform for attracting major clinical trials of anti-tussives, thus speeding up drug discovery, with the ultimate aim of providing better treatments for patients with chronic cough.

Objectives

To develop a large, prospective, observational database of patients with chronic cough managed throughout Europe. This dataset will provide real-life data regarding the current management of chronic cough to support the clinical audit of clinics across Europe, allowing further refinement of existing protocols and evidence based clinical practice guidelines.
To promote collaborative research between European specialist cough clinics.
To provide a Europe-wide database of carefully phenotyped cough patients providing, for the first time, a Europe-wide registry of ‘clinical trial ready’ chronic cough patients suitable for multi-centre experimental medicine studies and later phase precision medicine clinical trials.
To serve as an important resource of well-characterised biological samples suitable for genetic studies and genomic and proteomic analysis.
To undertake detailed statistical analysis to identify distinct cough phenotypes and to develop risk stratification models to define cough patient sub-groups with specific patterns of therapeutic response and disease progression.
To record and define longitudinally the stability of the chronic cough phenotype by recording of core dataset at baseline and 12 months.

ICD11

The World Health Organisation’s International Classification of Diseases is a health care classification system that provides a system of diagnostic codes for classifying diseases. At present chronic cough is not listed as a condition in its own right and cough is regarded as a symptom of other diseases. The NEUROCOUGH Consortium seeks to address this omission by submitting evidence to WHO in support of the inclusion of chronic cough in the next edition, ICD11.

European Lung Foundation

The European Lung Foundation (ELF) and its Cough Patient Advisory Group have provided input into NEUROCOUGH’s design and implementation based on the priorities and unmet needs of patients. The ELF is supporting NEUROCOUGH by providing resources in plain language for patients about diagnosis and treatment options, and through public awareness activities. NEUROCOUGH will seek to improve awareness of cough amongst primary care clinicians through links with the European Respiratory Society Assembly.

The Patient Advisory Group has provided perspective on study design, recruitment plans and assisted with developing patient information sheets and consent forms and improving ways to recruit participants to clinical trials. The NEURCOUGH Consortium will disseminate and communicate the importance of diagnosing and treating chronic cough through guidelines written in plain English for the benefit of patients, and translate them into the languages of each of the other European partners (Dutch, French, German, Italian, Polish, Spanish and others).