Asthma varies from person to person. The symptoms of asthma are chest tightness, coughing, shortness of breath, and wheezing. Wheezing is the most common symptom. However some people only cough. Nighttime coughing spells like you have described are not unusual. Each person with asthma could have only one of these symptoms or a combination of any of these symptoms, including all four of them.
With asthma the basic problem is chronic inflammation along with tightness of the airways of the lungs. This inflammation increases the sensitivity of the airways to a variety of things that make asthma worse. These asthma triggers vary from person to person. For some people allergies cause more asthma symptoms, but for other people allergies do not cause asthma symptoms at all. Having allergy testing done will clarify if this is a problem for your daughter. Exercise is a common trigger. Also asthma tends to be worse during the night, especially when postnasal drip is a problem. Please read our What Makes Asthma Worse MedFact at http://www.nationaljewish.org/medfacts/worse.html for more detailed information identifying your triggers and minimizing your exposure to them.
Viral infections like the flu can cause inflammation of the airways of the lungs. This inflammation can cause coughing. After the flu is gone, it is possible for the inflammation to linger. This inflammation can last for several weeks. Sometimes this inflammation may linger for 3 to 6 months. Eventually the inflammation will go away, and then the coughing will stop. This is called reactive airways disease (RAD) and behaves a lot like asthma. On a simple breathing test, called spirometry, this may not show up. This inflammation often clears more quickly when it is treated with an inhaled steroid medicine that is used to treat asthma.
When this continues, it is generally considered to be asthma. Testing can be helpful to show if your daughter
i would...i would also have her checked for sinusitis...my daughter had a cough that was more prominent at night...i insisted she have sinus films and she was diagnoses with a sinus infection...she took antibiotics and the cough went away.....good luck