摘要篇首： Wheezing is a common symptom of asthma and a main reason for most patients to seek medical care. Although wheezing has long been considered the essential symptom of asthma, clinical observations have shown that chronic cough is also an important symptom of asthma, even the sole presenting manifestation in cough variant asthma.1 As a special form of asthma, cough variant asthma probably represents the milder end of the spectrum of asthma or the forerunner of asthma, and may develop into typical asthma when the state of the illness progresses.2 Therefore, there may be a natural course from chronic cough to wheezing in the pathogenesis of asthma. However, there is currently no data to show how many patients with asthma present chronic cough before the first onset of wheezing. To investigate this question, we performed this questionnaire survey.