Health outcome · symptom
Asthma exacerbation
Part of: Asthma
Also: asthma attack, asthma exacerbations, acute asthma, severe asthma episode
A worsening of asthma beyond the person's usual state, needing extra treatment, an unscheduled consultation or admission. It is an event in someone who already has the disease, not a new case of it.
Not reviewed by a clinician. This entry describes a disease or a symptom. We are introducing clinical review for pages of this kind; until that reviewer is in place, this page has been written and checked by the Coridum team but not reviewed by a clinician. It is general information and not medical advice. How this library is built is described in How we build this library.
Why it matters indoors
The distinction between causing a disease and triggering an attack in someone who has it runs through this whole vocabulary, and it is at its sharpest here. Whether an indoor exposure makes a child develop asthma is a question about incidence, answered by cohorts over years; whether it sends that child to hospital next week is a question about exacerbation, and it is the one a household can act on immediately.
The two are also easier to study on different designs. An exacerbation is a dated event, so it can be linked to a dated exposure — a damp autumn, a new gas heater, a smoky evening — and it responds within a season to an intervention such as filtration or allergen reduction.
Definitions vary and the caveat records which was used: an unscheduled visit, a course of oral steroids, an admission and a symptom-diary threshold are four different outcomes reported under one word.
Indoor factors with evidence
| Factor | Effect | Population | Study design | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mould | prevalence 45 | children aged 1-17 years with asthma or recurrent wheeze · dwelling | CHAMPIASTHMA multicentre cross-sectional observational study in Northern France: 424 children aged 1-17 years with recurrent wheeze or asthma stratified by parental-questionnaire exposure to moisture and/or mould (146 exposed), asthma control by GINA and ACT/pACT, exacerbations and mould sensitisation compared between groups | F-0552 Home exposure to moisture and mold is associated with poorer… (2025) | machine |
| Mould | prevalence 32 | children aged 1-17 years with asthma or recurrent wheeze · dwelling | CHAMPIASTHMA multicentre cross-sectional observational study in Northern France: 424 children aged 1-17 years with recurrent wheeze or asthma stratified by parental-questionnaire exposure to moisture and/or mould (146 exposed), asthma control by GINA and ACT/pACT, exacerbations and mould sensitisation compared between groups | F-0553 Home exposure to moisture and mold is associated with poorer… (2025) | machine |
Each row is one Finding — a sentence as printed in one study, recorded with its page in the Coridum Knowledge Base. Follow the Finding number for the exact wording and the citation. Checked says who verified the row: machine means every automatic check passed and the surrounding text was read; person means someone read the sentence in the document. Rows are re-checked by a person over time. The studies are curated in the Coridum Knowledge Base; the reading of them together is a Claim, shown separately.
Cite this page
Coridum Research. Asthma exacerbation. Coridum Knowledge G-0181, 16 September 2026. https://coridum.com/k/G-0181/