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HEALTH ANSWERS

What can be done to cure a persistent cough?

By Courtney Humphries

 |  Globe Staff  

  February 13, 2012

We all experience periods of coughing with colds, but a cough that won’t go away is not something to ignore, says James Mojica, a pulmonologist at Massachusetts General Hospital. ”The lung doesn’t have pain fibers, so the way that it communicates is by generating a cough,” he says. In fact, irritation anywhere in the airway can trigger a cough, so the problem may originate higher up than the lungs. The best remedy is to identify and treat the underlying problem that’s triggering the coughing reflex.

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