Health outcome · symptom
Dyspnoea (breathlessness)
Part of: Respiratory symptoms
Also: dyspnea, breathlessness, shortness of breath, orthopnoea
The sensation of laboured or uncomfortable breathing, reported by the person experiencing it and usually graded by how much exertion brings it on. It is a symptom, not a measurement, and it can be present with normal lung function and absent with abnormal.
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
Breathlessness is what brings people to notice their lungs, and it is what household questionnaires can capture where spirometry cannot reach. Graded scales that ask at what point on a slope or a flight of stairs breathing becomes difficult have been used for decades and are comparable between studies, which makes this a workable outcome in exactly the settings where solid fuel exposure is highest.
Its weakness is that the sensation has many origins. Airway obstruction produces it; so do heart failure, anaemia, deconditioning, obesity and anxiety — and carbon monoxide produces it by reducing the oxygen the blood can carry, without any lung disease at all.
Coridum therefore treats a result under this slug as evidence about a symptom and not about a diagnosis, and does not merge it with results measured by lung function testing. Where a study used a named grading scale, the caveat records which.
Indoor factors with evidence
| Factor | Effect | Population | Study design | Source | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Carbon monoxide (CO) | OR 0.44 (0.24–0.84) | reproductive-aged women · home | descriptive cross-sectional study among 403 reproductive-aged women (15 to 49 years) in the Central Province of Sri Lanka: cooking fuel and respiratory symptoms from an interviewer-administered questionnaire, exposure assessed with a breath carbon-monoxide monitor and carboxyhaemoglobin estimated from it, with logistic regression adjusted for confounders | F-0878 Pathirathna Impact of solid fuel usage on respiratory symptoms among rep… (2022) | machine |
| Wood | OR 1.08 (1.01–1.15) | — · home | pooled analysis of national household surveys across many countries: cooking with wood related to respiratory symptoms and acute respiratory infection in children, by region and by urban or rural residence | F-1711 Woolley et al. Comparison of Respiratory Health Impacts Associated with Woo… (2021) | machine |
| Biomass fuel | prevalence 17.8 (14.1–21.5) | female biomass fuel users · home | cross-sectional study of rural and urban Nepalese adults: 24-hour indoor fine particulate matter and carbon monoxide measured in biomass-using and non-biomass-using homes, with respiratory symptoms recorded by questionnaire | F-1746 The effect of exposure to biomass smoke on respiratory sympt… (2014) | machine |
| Biomass fuel | prevalence 12.0 (8.9–15.1) | male biomass fuel users · home | cross-sectional study of rural and urban Nepalese adults: 24-hour indoor fine particulate matter and carbon monoxide measured in biomass-using and non-biomass-using homes, with respiratory symptoms recorded by questionnaire | F-1747 The effect of exposure to biomass smoke on respiratory sympt… (2014) | 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.
Identifiers
- MeSH
- D004417
Cite this page
Coridum Research. Dyspnoea (breathlessness). Coridum Knowledge G-0184, 16 September 2026. https://coridum.com/k/G-0184/