Etiology

CCB is purportedly a chronic indolent, slowly progressive inflammatory response, which results in airway inflammation and goblet cell hypertrophy (Rozanski 2014). Proposed pathogenesis of the condition has been environmental pollutants (dust and cig­arette smoke) (Rozanski 2014; Yamaya, Sugiya, and Watari 2015) and allergies (Yamaya and Watari 2015). Further work has demonstrated that cigarette smoke expo­sure results in damage to DNA in the lungs of dogs with CCB, suggesting that smoke inhalation may induce inflammatory changes in the airways of dogs with CCB (Yamaya et al. 2015).