8 Month old baby has asthma…

My 8 month old son, has been sounding rather “chesty” and wheezy for around 5 months now, although the doctors have given him both a blue and a brown inhaler, he absolutely screams and cries when i put the face mask on him to use the spacer with his inhalers, every time i take him to a doctor they have said its viral until Friday when i finally got told he is asthmatic, but the problem is, when i looked at him tonight, he is no longer wheezy, after his inhalers, but he has a cracking sound coming from his throat, he also has a chesty cough which he has had for months and months, ive been to several doctors, and they all say the same.. “VIRAL”, only one has said asthma, what else can i do, as i am still not happy with his symptoms at all, he has no rash, no fever, no vomiting or diarrhoea , or anything like that, or could the doctor be correct and it actually be asthma, as i have asthma myself.
all answers with be appreciated
thanks in advance

They are in a sense all correct. The commonest trigger for the symptoms you describe is a viral illness. Children get these about once every 7 weeks. If your child reacts to the virus by getting a cough and wheeze for 6 or 7 weeks with each virus, he basically appears symptomatic all the time.

The symptoms are those of asthma and will generally respond to anti asthma therapy. Steroid inhalers (brown) used chronically do stabilise the respiratory mucosa, however as you have discovered they are very difficult to administer. Beta 2 agonists for wheeze, the blue inhaler usually salbutamol, are not really effective in children under about 18 months in inhaler doses, but may work acutely in asthma attacks in the much higher doses administered via electric nebulisers. Generally the preferred drug in children under 1 year is ipratropium bromide, (Atrovent,). To stand any chance of reducing wheeze either drug needs to be given in quite large doses even to small children. 2 puffs per dose is often prescribed where 10 (yes ten,) are usually required to produce any real effect.

There is one other drug option which may reduce symptoms and this has the advantage of being taken by mouth, montelukast an Antileukotriene.

There is one other complication to the diagnosis of asthma, though your child is exhibiting classical asthma symptoms there is a tendency to advise that the diagnostic label of asthma is not applied to children under the age of 2 years. This is because a significant group of children exhibit these symptoms below that age but then become symptom free without becoming established asthmatics. The problem then of course becomes what should they be called? sometimes they are referred to as infants with bronchial hyper-reactivity in response to viruses, and are not labelled asthmatic until they are seen to be continuing to have symptoms beyond the age of 2 years. I am unconvinced that this arbitrary distinction based on age is helpful.