Introduction: Most patients with idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) complain of cough. IPF-associated cough is widely characterized as dry or non-productive by an expert opinion or general assumption.

Aims and objectives: The aim of this study was to compare chronic cough in IPF patients to cough in subjects with chronic cough from a community-based sample, and to investigate whether cough in IPF is less productive than chronic cough in a community.

Methods: The IPF cough population consisted of 46 biopsy-confirmed patients. The control population consisted of subjects with chronic cough, gathered by a community-based email survey sent to public service employees and the Finnish Pensioners? Federation. A case-control setting was applied by having four age, gender, and smoking-status matched subjects from the community sample for each IPF cough patient. A cough specific quality of life questionnaire (Leicester Cough Questionnaire (LCQ)) was filled in by all subjects. The LCQ questionnaire contains 19 questions, each question is scored from 1 to 7 and the total score from 3 to 21 with a smaller value indicating more severe impairment.

Results: The sputum production frequency was 5.0 (3.0-6.0) in the IPF chronic cough population and 5.0 (3.0?6.0) in the community-based chronic cough population (median and interquartile range p=0.72). The LCQ total score was 14.8 (11.5-18.1) in the IPF chronic cough population and 15.4 (13.0?17.5) in the community-based chronic cough population (p=0.76).

Conclusion: Cough in IPF patients was not distinguishable from chronic cough in the community-based population. There were no differences in sputum production or the LCQ total scores between the two populations.