TRP channels and temperature in airway disease—clinical significance

Temperatures above and below what is generally regarded as “comfortable” for the human being have long been known to induce various airway symptoms, especially in combination with exercise in cold climate with temperatures below 0°C, which is naturally since exercise is followed by enhanced ventilation and thus greater amounts of inhaled cold air. The aim was to highlight the knowledge we have today on symptoms from the airways (here also including the eyes) arisen from various temperatures; the mechanisms, the pathophysiology and their clinical significance. The most common eye and airway conditions related to temperature changes are dry eye disease, rhinitis, laryngeal dysfunction, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and chronic cough. Transient receptor potential (TRP) ion channels are probably involved in all temperature induced airway symptoms but via different pathways, which are now beginning to be mapped out. In asthma, the most persuasive hypothesis today is that cold-induced asthmatic bronchoconstriction is induced by dehydration of the airway mucosa, from which it follows that provocations with osmotic stimuli like hypertonic saline and mannitol can be used as a surrogate for exercise provocation as well as dry air inhalation. In chronic unexplained cough there seems to be a direct influence of cold air on the TRP ion channels followed by coughing and increased cough sensitivity to inhaled capsaicin. Revelations in the last decades of the ability of several airway TRP ion channels to sense and react to ambient air temperature have opened new windows for the understanding of the pathogenesis in a diversity of airway reactions appearing in many common respiratory diseases.