Pneumonia
Initially a dry cough which after a few days turns to a wet cough with yellow, green, and/or red or rust-tinged mucus.
Other telltale symptoms: Fever, chills, trouble breathing, pain when breathing in deeply or coughing
Diagnosis and Rx: Your doctor can usually tell if you have pneumonia by listening to your chest with a stethoscope, although she may order an x-ray and blood tests to determine if it’s viral or bacterial, Dr. Parsons says. Treatment for the latter is antibiotics; if it’s viral, the only remedy is rest, OTC cough meds, and chicken soup.
Whooping cough (pertussis)
Sounds like: A severe, hacking cough that ends with a whooping sound as you breathe in. While this disease used to be extremely rare thanks to vaccines introduced back in the 1940s, it’s now seeing an upswing—in 2012, there were more than 48,000 cases reported, the most since 1955, according to the CDC.
Other telltale symptoms: The first symptoms are similar to the common cold: stuffy, runny nose, watery eyes, fever, and cough. But after about a week the classic coughing signs emerge, with hacking so intense you may throw up or turn red or blue, he says
Diagnosis and Rx: Pertussis is diagnosed with blood tests and a chest X-ray. It’s treated with antibiotics.
Medication-related cough
A dry cough. A group of drugs known as ACE inhibitors are commonly prescribed to treat high blood pressure; they can cause cough in about 20% of patients.
Other telltale symptoms: Cough begins a few weeks after starting these meds, Dr. Parsons says.
Diagnosis and Rx: Talk to your doctor. If your cough is mild, you may be okay switching to a different ACE inhibitor, he says, but if it’s severe, you’ll want to switch to another type of blood pressure med entirely, such as an angiotensin receptor blocker or ARB, like
7 types of coughs
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