Both are available as capsules. Carbocisteine is also available as an oral liquid. Two other types of mucolytic are available to prescribe. They are called dornase alfa and mannitol. These medicines are inhaled but are usually only prescribed for people with cystic fibrosis. This leaflet is about mucolytics.
If you have a cough for more than three weeks you should see your doctor. Treatment will depend on the cause. Some people need help with a long-term cough for which no cause can be found.
A steamy shower or steam from a humidifier can help to loosen phlegm. Simple linctus and cough sweets can be quite soothing. Cough suppressant medicines may help, especially if you have a cough at night, but these usually contain codeine, which can cause constipation if taken excessively.
For more information, see the separate leaflet called Chronic Persistent Cough in Adults. It goes without saying that the best way to keep your lungs healthy is not to smoke - and it's n The mucus sputum in your lungs is held together by certain bonds. Mucolytics work by breaking these bonds. When these bonds are broken, the mucus becomes less sticky and less thick, and is easier to cough up. This may also have a knock-on effect of making it harder for germs bacteria to infect the mucus and cause chest infections.
Find out if you are eligible today. They are normally prescribed for people with a long-term chronic productive cough. If you have a productive cough, your lungs make a lot of mucus sputum and you cough this up. Examples of people who may have a chronic productive cough include people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease COPD and people with cystic fibrosis. The number of flare-ups of symptoms tends to be less in people who take a mucolytic.
Dornase alfa is usually only prescribed for people with cystic fibrosis who have a reduced lung capacity. It helps to make it easier to cough up thick mucus, and is thought to improve how well the lungs work. It also limits any further damage to the lungs. This medicine is usually started by a doctor who specialises in treating patients with cystic fibrosis.
This result was based on 28 studies involving people. However, the studies carried out a longer time ago s to s show greater benefit than those carried out more recently. Shorter studies also seemed to show more benefit than longer studies. This could be because the newer trials were larger and may be showing that mucolytics are less beneficial than the earlier studies showed. Or it could be that only studies that showed mucolytics as beneficial were published before the s, when there was a push to report all trial results regardless of whether or not they showed benefit.
People taking mucolytics had fewer days of disability i. They were also approximately one-third less likely to be admitted to hospital, although this result is based on only five studies that provided this information. Study results suggest that mucolytics do not have an important impact on quality of life or lung function. People taking mucolytics did not experience more unwanted side effects than those taking placebo.
But we could not be sure about their impact on death during the study period because only 37 deaths occurred amongst the participants in studies where deaths were measured and reported.
We are moderately confident about the results we have presented. Our confidence is reduced by the results from individual studies looking quite different from one another and the mix of older and newer studies that we found.
Also, in some cases there were not enough data to be sure whether mucolytics were better or worse than, or the same as, placebo. Mucolytics appear to be useful for reducing flare-ups, days of disability, and hospital admissions in people with COPD or chronic bronchitis, and they do not appear to cause more side effects.
However, they do not appear to have much impact on quality of life or lung function, and we could not be sure about their impact on death.
In participants with chronic bronchitis or COPD, we are moderately confident that treatment with mucolytics leads to a small reduction in the likelihood of having an acute exacerbation, in days of disability per month and possibly hospitalisations, but is not associated with an increase in adverse events. There appears to be limited impact on lung function or health-related quality of life. Results are too imprecise to be certain whether or not there is an effect on mortality.
Our confidence in the results is reduced by high levels of heterogeneity in many of the outcomes and the fact that effects on exacerbations shown in early trials were larger than those reported by more recent studies. This may be a result of greater risk of selection or publication bias in earlier trials, thus benefits of treatment may not be as great as was suggested by previous evidence.
Individuals with chronic bronchitis or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease COPD may suffer recurrent exacerbations with an increase in volume or purulence of sputum, or both. Personal and healthcare costs associated with exacerbations indicate that therapies that reduce the occurrence of exacerbations are likely to be useful.
Mucolytics are oral medicines that are believed to increase expectoration of sputum by reducing its viscosity, thus making it easier to cough it up. Improved expectoration of sputum may lead to a reduction in exacerbations of COPD. Corticosteroid suppression of antiviral immunity increases bacterial loads and mucus production in COPD exacerbations.
Nat Commun. Pocket guide to COPD diagnosis, management, and prevention: a guide for health care professionals report. Acute exacerbation of COPD. Effect of carbocisteine on patients with COPD: a systematic review and meta-analysis.
Role of guaifenesin in the management of chronic bronchitis and upper respiratory tract infections. Multidiscip Respir Med. Yoon H, Lee DH.
Mucolytics as adjuvant agent to improve helicobacter pylori eradication rate: still long and winding road to positive results. Gut Liver. Mucolytic agents for chronic bronchitis or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease.
Cochrane Database Syst Rev. Your Privacy Rights. To change or withdraw your consent choices for VerywellHealth. At any time, you can update your settings through the "EU Privacy" link at the bottom of any page. These choices will be signaled globally to our partners and will not affect browsing data. We and our partners process data to: Actively scan device characteristics for identification. I Accept Show Purposes. Table of Contents View All.
Table of Contents. Before Taking. Side Effects. The various types of mucolytic agents each have a different action: Expectorants increase airway water to help with mucus clearing. Mucoregulators increase the movement of mucus via cough. Mucokinetics suppress the mechanisms causing excess mucus secretions.
Was this page helpful? Thanks for your feedback! Sign Up.
0コメント