Symptoms associated with asthma Cough

A chronic cough, if left untreated, often develops into an asthma cough which intensifies into classic asthma over time. A WHO report estimates, “There are 15 and 20 million asthma patients in India.” That makes about 10% of world’s asthma patients.

Pollution is considered as the biggest factor for gradually growing incidences of asthma.

What is Asthma?

Asthma is a common inflammatory disease of lungs. Technically, it is caused by a long-term inflammation in the lung’s airways. The symptoms of asthma vary. However, the most common symptom of the disease is long-term coughing.

In asthma, the airways of the lungs get blocked or narrowed, because of which the patient experiences problems in breathing, wheezing, dyspnea and uncontrollable coughing.

An asthma cough is typically classified in three categories: Cough Variant Asthma (CVA), Cough Predominant Asthma (CPA), and Persistent Cough (PC) that doesn’t go even after standard therapy and medication.

Asthma a cough, which is also known as cough variant asthma, is an early stage of asthma. It is a worsened condition of a chronic cough, which is defined as a cough that a patient has been living with for 8 weeks.

The main symptom of cough variant asthma is dry, non-productive coughing. People in this stage have no symptoms of classic asthma i.e. wheezing and short breath.

Symptoms of Asthma Cough

• It is a chronic cough that has remained for more than six to eight weeks.
• The coughing can occur any time of the day, however, mostly at night while sleeping when the body’s temperature is down
• Coughing increases with physical activity or exercise. That’s why an asthma cough is also called exercise-induced asthma.
• Coughing also increases when exposed to dust, fog, smog, chilled air-conditioned air, and strong fragrance.

The actual causes of asthma and asthma cough are still unknown. However, it starts with coughing (cold). First, coughing develops into a chronic or an asthma cough after an eight-week spell of coughing. Then, if not cured, the condition may deepen further to take form of classic asthma.