Connection between asthma and anxiety disorders highlighted
With various studies linking asthma to anxiety disorders, new research has pointed to its possible connection with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
A study of male twins in the US suggested that the association cannot be explained away by genetic influences.
Published in this month’s American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, the work included 3,065 pairs of twins who had served in the Vietnam War.
Among all the twins, those who suffered from the most PTSD symptoms were 2.3 times as likely to have asthma compared with those who suffered from the least PTSD symptoms.
Dr Renee Goodwin, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at New York’s Columbia University, pointed out that the study included both identical and fraternal twins (who share only half of the same genetic material).
"If there had been a strong genetic component to the link between asthma and PTSD, the results between these two types of twins would have been different, but we didn’t find substantial differences between the two," the lead researcher explained.
Dr Goodwin confirmed that the work backed up previous studies which illustrated a relationship between asthma and other anxiety disorders including depression.
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