We were surprised to read in the exhaustive and, some might say, exhausting review of gender differences in airway behaviour by Becklake and Kauffmann1 that the most common respiratory symptom—namely, cough—deserved only a single sentence and was then dismissed. In fact, the most dramatic gender difference in airway sensitivity is seen with the cough reflex. We studied 163 consecutive, healthy, non-smoking volunteers (90 women, mean age 32 years) with an inhalation cough challenge of five one-second inhalations of 10% citric acid delivered from a Mefar dosimeter. Women coughed over 50% more than men (mean …