A mother from Gloucestershire has spoken out about the death of her three-year-old daughter, Penny Dunn, after a persistent cough and breathlessness were initially treated as a minor childhood illness and prescribed an asthma inhaler. Courtney Dunn is urging other parents not to dismiss a lingering cough in children as simply a seasonal cold, after the symptom turned out to be an early sign of dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM), a serious and rare heart muscle disease that ultimately proved fatal.

Penny's cough began around Christmas and failed to improve despite treatment, and by summer she was suffering seizures and had become lethargic. She was rushed to hospital after collapsing at her nursery sports day in late June, where doctors discovered her heart was failing to pump blood effectively; she was later diagnosed with DCM and underwent major surgery, but had already suffered irreversible brain and organ damage from lack of blood flow. Her life support was switched off on 6 July. DCM affects around 4,000 people in the UK each year and is a leading cause of heart failure, but is far less common in children than adults, though infants under one face higher risk; its causes in children remain unclear but may involve genetic mutations or viral infections.