Contactless monitoring of nocturnal cough has been linked to worsening asthma symptoms for up to three days, suggesting a potential objective measure of disease activity.

Study captures cough without patient intervention

New data from Leiden University Medical Centre suggest that nocturnal cough measured passively at home is associated with worsening daily symptoms in adults with severe, uncontrolled asthma.

The study used Albus Health’s Albus Home contactless monitoring platform, which records nocturnal respiratory data without requiring patients to wear a device or actively record symptoms.

Among the first 13 of 20 participants, people were monitored for a median of 335 nights out of 365, with a median of 9.5 hours of monitoring each night. Most missing data were attributed to participants being away from home.

Participants also recorded their daily asthma severity using an eHealth application, allowing the researchers to compare objectively measured nocturnal cough with patient-reported symptoms.

The findings were presented at the European Respiratory Society (ERS) Congress 2026.

Higher cough rates associated with later symptoms

Higher nocturnal cough rates were associated with worse asthma symptom scores on the following day.

For every five-fold increase in cough rate, the odds of a worse symptom score the next day were 1.55 times higher (95% CI 1.40–1.72; p<0.001). The association continued over the following two days, with odds ratios of 1.49 for day two and 1.43 for day three.

Fleur Meulmeester, lead study author at Leiden University Medical Centre, said: “Showing that objective nocturnal cough data, generated passively without the patient having to do or wear anything, correlates with patient-reported symptoms may help overcome this hurdle and demonstrates the potential of passive monitoring to provide valuable, objective insights into asthma management.”

The researchers noted that cough patterns differed between individuals. This means further work is needed to determine which patients might benefit most from nocturnal cough as a potential signal of worsening asthma.

The findings are therefore relevant not only to asthma monitoring but also to clinical research, where frequent assessment of symptoms can be difficult without adding to participant burden.

Contactless monitoring could support longer-term studies

Albus Home’s first-generation platform was used in the study. The technology uses contactless sensing to monitor respiratory measures overnight, with the latest generation also designed to capture measures including heart rate, sleep, inhalation and exhalation duration and indoor environmental parameters.

Previous research has independently evaluated Albus Home’s ability to monitor nocturnal cough. A 2022 ERS study involving adults with respiratory conditions found close agreement between automated cough detection and reference counts made by human observers, supporting the platform’s potential for longitudinal cough monitoring.

The latest findings extend that work by examining whether objectively measured cough is associated with subsequent changes in asthma symptoms over a much longer monitoring period.

For clinical trials, the ability to collect respiratory data repeatedly overnight without requiring participants to remember to record symptoms or wear a sensor could provide an additional source of longitudinal information.

However, the current findings establish an association rather than demonstrating that nocturnal cough can predict asthma deterioration or improve outcomes. Further research will be needed to determine whether the signal can be used reliably to identify worsening disease or measure treatment response.

Albus Health said its technology is currently being used by pharmaceutical companies and is available in 50 countries.