Cough Suppressants, Expectorants and Mucolytics: the Cough Reflex and the Drugs That Act on It

A pharmacology deck on cough medicines. It treats cough as a protective reflex, separates productive from dry cough and classifies cough by duration, then traces the reflex from mechanoreceptor and chemoreceptor stimulation through the medullary cough centre to the efferent impulse. The drug sections give the pharyngeal demulcents and the directly acting expectorants with their doses and cautions, the mucolytics bromhexine and ambroxol and acetylcysteine, the opioid antitussives codeine, pholcodeine and ethylmorphine, the non-opioids noscapine, dextromethorphan and oxeladin, the antihistamines used for cough, and the bronchodilators when bronchospasm is driving the cough.