My Child Only Coughs With Exercise. Should He/She Be On Regular Asthma Medicine?

— -- Question: My child only coughs with exercise. Should he/she be on regular asthma medicine?

Answer: Coughing is actually one of the main things we see. We look at all the symptoms that would lead us to worry about exercise-induced asthma. And coughing after exercise or during exercise is one of the big ones that we look for.

And so the real question with exercise-induced asthma is: is this only asthma with exercise, what we would call exercise-induced bronchoconstriction? And if it's only that, then we can get away with pre-treating those folks with albuterol before exercise.

On the other hand, if it turns out that that patient does have regular asthma that has other triggers and is there on a persistent basis, those are the patients that need to be on controller medicines for the asthma and need the full treatment for asthma.

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