Symptoms

Symptoms of asthma can be mild or severe. Your child may have no symptoms; severe, daily symptoms; or something in between. How often your child has symptoms can also change.

Symptoms of asthma may include:

• Wheezing, a whistling noise of varying loudness that occurs when the airways of the lungs (bronchial tubes) narrow.
• Coughing, which is the only symptom for some children.
• Chest tightness.
• Shortness of breath, which is rapid, shallow breathing or difficulty breathing.
• Sleep disturbance.
• Tiring quickly during exercise.

If your child has only one or two of these symptoms, it does not necessarily mean he or she has asthma. The more of these symptoms your child has, the more likely it is that he or she has asthma.

Many children have symptoms that become worse at night (nocturnal asthma). In all people, lung function changes throughout the day and night. In children with asthma, this often is very noticeable, especially at night. Nighttime cough and shortness of breath occur frequently. In general, waking at night because of shortness of breath or cough indicates poorly controlled asthma.

What Happens

Asthma often begins during childhood or the teen years and may last throughout your child's life.

Asthma is classified as intermittent, mild persistent, moderate persistent, and severe persistent.

It can be hard to know how severe your child's asthma attack is. Knowing this is important, because severe attacks may require emergency treatment. But in most cases you can take care of your child's symptoms at home with an asthma action plan, which is a written plan that tells you which medicine your child needs to use and when you should call a doctor or seek emergency treatment.

Asthma attacks and what makes them worse

An asthma attack occurs when your child's symptoms suddenly increase. While some asthma attacks occur very suddenly, many get worse over a period of several days.

Things that can lead to an asthma attack or make one worse include:

• A cold or another type of respiratory illness, especially one caused by a virus, such as influenza.
• Exercising (exercise-induced asthma), especially if the air is cold and dry.
• Triggers, such as cigarette smoke, air pollution, dust mites, or animal dander.
• Changes in hormones, such as during the start of a girl's menstrual blood flow at puberty.
• Medicines, such as aspirin (aspirin-induced asthma) or nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs.

Most asthma attacks result from a failure to control asthma with medicines. When your child strictly follows his or her asthma action plan and takes all medicines correctly, it is possible to prevent attacks.

Effect on your child's life

At times, the inflammation found in asthma causes your child's airways to narrow and produce mucus, resulting in asthma symptoms such as shortness of breath.

Loss of lung function in asthma appears to start early in childhood.³ Asthma also may increase the risk of a partial collapse of lung tissue (atelectasis) or a collapsed lung (pneumothorax).

Sometimes asthma does not respond to treatment because children are not taking their medicines or are not taking them correctly, are not avoiding triggers, and are otherwise not following their asthma action plan. It is very important that you and other caregivers make sure your child is following his or her action plan to keep asthma from getting worse and to reduce the risk of death from asthma.

By following asthma plans, most children who have asthma can live a healthy, full life.