Studying children's coughs might help doctors diagnose asthma earlier than can be done with existing bronchial tests.
Researchers at Sydney's Woolcock Institute of Medical Research have found marked differences between the coughing sounds of children with asthma and children without.
William Thorpe, who led the study, said the findings might lead to better asthma tests for young children, who are more difficult to diagnose through standard spirometry tests.
"The standard test requires you to blow as hard as you can through a spirometer, which measures air flow, and really requires someone to try their hardest," Dr Thorpe said.
"With children under five it's hard to know if they are trying their hardest, but a cough is not under the same conscious control so we can be more sure that when a three-year-old is coughing, the cough is genuine."
In a pilot study at the Children's Hospital at Westmead last year, cough sounds from 23 asthmatic and 12 non-asthmatic children, aged six to eight years, were recorded on computer before and after exercise.
Researchers found distinct acoustic differences in the pitch and volume of the coughs of the two groups. Before exercise, children with asthma had quieter coughs with higher sound frequencies than non-asthmatic children. The pattern worsened after the asthmatic children ran on a treadmill for six minutes.
"At this stage we think that [the finding] reflects that asthmatic children have smaller airways, which explains the different characteristics of sound," Dr Thorpe said.
Dr Thorpe, who will present the findings at a conference in Sydney later this month, said applying the acoustic test to other diseases such as cystic fibrosis would determine how useful it could be.
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