Chronic cough (coughing lasting eight weeks or longer) is a burdensome disease, causing low quality of life due to disruption that frequent coughing causes to daily life [1–3.] Its prevalence is estimated to be 10% of global population [4]. Chronic cough can be due to underlying conditions such as asthma and COPD, or can persist despite the treatment (refractory chronic cough) or have unidentified origins (unexplained chronic cough) [5, 6]. Due to its prevalence and lack of effective treatments, there is high interest in developing drugs for refractory and unexplained chronic cough. Cough frequency, represented as coughs per hour measured over 24h or awake time, has been used as a key endpoint in multiple clinical drug trials [7, 8]. Footnotes This manuscript has recently been accepted for publication in the ERJ Open Research . It is published here in its accepted form prior to copyediting and typesetting by our production team. After these production processes are complete and the authors have approved the resulting proofs, the article will move to the latest issue of the ERJOR online. Please open or download the PDF to view this article. Conflict of interest: AM has received consulting fees from Bellus, Merck, NeRRi, Trevi. Lecture fees from Merck and grant support from Bellus, Merck, Nocion, Philips, NeRRi, Trevi. I am founder and CEO of Tussogenics Ltd and hold a share option with SIVA Health. Conflict of interest: MA and LK our employees of SIVA Health Conflict of interest: SH and AR have no declarations. Conflict of interest: DE has received grant support from SIVA Health.