Antitussive activity of alcoxyphenyl carbamic acid analogues.

In this study we report pharmacological evaluation of four newly synthetized analogues of alcoxyphenyl carbamic acid, structurally related to butamirate citrate that is frequently used as cough suppressing drug, and marked as ATK 231, ATK 241, ATK 251 and ATK 261. These agents with various modifications of the molecular structure have been tested for antitussive activity in cough induced by inhalation of aerosol of citric acid (0.3 M) over 3 minutes using conscious guinea pigs. Results revealed significant cough suppressing activity without significant influence on specific airways resistances in all tested substances. ATK 231 and ATK241 showed significantly higher total antitussive activities when compared to both codeine phosphate and butamirate citrate, while ATK 251 only comparing to butamirate citrate. We did not observe any notable adverse effects and these compounds could thus potentially represent promising new non-narcotic antitussives suitable for further studies.