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Q&A: Asthma Symptoms

The most common symptoms of asthma are:

• Wheezing (the most characteristic symptom of asthma, but it is important to know that other diseases, specially during infancy (the first two years of life), can develop wheezing.
  
• Cough. Persistent cough at night and cough during exercise are two clear examples of asthmatic cough. But cough is a very frequent symptom during infancy and childhood. In fact, it is the most common symptom reported by parents, then it is very important to make a difference between asthmatic cough and cough caused by cold, influenza, etc.

Other asthma symptoms are:

• shortness of breath
• tightness of the chest
• waking up at night

These symptoms of asthma can appear like episodes (called exacerbations, asthma attacks and asthma crisis), that means, children have got time free of asthma sypmtoms and suddenly wheezing, cough and other symptoms appear.
A little number of people with asthma have got it all the time without free periods of symptoms.