Study: Asthma-PTSD Link Found-PTSD Combat : Winning the War Within

From HealthDay News via Forbes:

A study of male twins who served in Vietnam has uncovered a strong link between asthma and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Columbia University researchers, reporting in the Nov. 15 issue of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, found that those who suffered the most from PTSD were more than twice as likely to have asthma.

"This is very good data," said Keith A. Young, co-director of the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System Neuropsychiatry Research Program. "One of the things that is very clearly delineated by this study is that there truly is an association. This association has been seen with other anxiety disorders before, and there were some hints with PTSD, but this is the best. This kind of sets it in stone."

The challenge now is to find out whether this is a cause-and-effect relationship. Previous studies have indicated a more general link between anxiety disorders and asthma, but this study focused specifically on PTSD, a disorder that involves nightmares, flashbacks and panic attacks linked to "triggers" that develop after exposure to combat or other extremely disturbing events.

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In the interest of education, article quoted from extensively.

Continuing:

This study looked at 3,065 male twin pairs listed in the Vietnam Era Twin Registry. The twins were either identical (meaning they shared all the same genetic material) or fraternal (sharing only half their genetic material). Such twin studies are useful to science, because they can help tease out genetic and environmental influences.

The twins in this study had all lived together as children and had all served on active military duty in Vietnam. There were no significant differences in history of combat exposure or cigarette smoking. The overall prevalence of asthma was 6 percent and was about the same in identical and fraternal twins.

Twins who suffered from the most PTSD symptoms were 2.3 times more likely to have asthma when compared with those who suffered from the least PTSD symptoms. The increased risk was about the same for both fraternal and identical twins, suggesting an environmental underpinning rather than a genetic one.

"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 any substantial differences between the two," lead researcher Renee D. Goodwin, an assistant professor of epidemiology at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University in New York City, said in a statement.

No one knows what the mechanisms are behind the association. It's possible that some sort of traumatic stress could trigger both PTSD and asthma, or one condition could contribute to the other.

"In my mind, the most likely thing that would relate these two is childhood stress," Young said. "It's very well-known that children who are a under a lot of stresses can grow up to have a different mental health outcome than their twin."

According to the study authors, understanding the association better may help PTSD prevention efforts by suggesting ways to modify environmental risk factors.

Labels: biological, mind_and_body, stress, studies, triggers, vietnam

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Well, that only makes sense, b/c there is usually a huge relationship between stress and asthma...

By Lily, at 11/16/2007 03:42:00 PM
I just read an outstanding article by yoga teacher Barbara Benagh at yogajournal.com/health/127?page=1 that provides physiological support for the link between PTSD and asthma especially when read in conjunction with Babette Rothschild's book about the psychophysiology of PTSD entitled The Body Remembers.

In the Yoga article, Benagh notes at page 3 that "several prominent experts on breathing...consider the malady to be more a disturbed breathing pattern than a disease." At page 4, she discusses the autonomic nervous system and its two branches, parasympathetic and sympathetic. "The parasympathetic branch, known as the 'relaxation response,' controls resting functions of the body. It slows the heart and breathing rate and activates digestion and elimination.

The sympathetic branch has the opposite effect. It rouses the body and regulates active functions related to emergencies and exercise. When emergencies arise, the sympathetic branch floods the body with adrenaline—the well-known 'fight or flight' response. The heart rate goes up and breathing rate increases to supply the body with an infusion of oxygen. If the danger is real, the increased energy is used. If not, the body stays in a state of overstimulation which can become chronic, causing a number of symptoms including anxiety and hyperventilation (overbreathing)."
She posits at page 5 that "[e]ventually, starved for oxygen, the body takes drastic measures to slow breathing so CO2 can build back up to safe levels. These measures produce the classic symptoms of an asthma attack: Smooth muscles tighten around the airways, the body further constricts them by producing mucus and histamine (which causes swelling)—and we're left gasping for breath."

Babette Rothschild in "The Body Remembers", has a lengthy discussion about the autonomic nervous system with its two branches and its physiological contribution to PTSD (pages 8-11).

In the last few pages of the Yoga article, Benagh discusses ways in which she learned to essentially overcome her asthma by breaking the cycle of overbreathing and provides several exercises for readers.

By Anonymous, at 5/01/2008 05:19:00 AM
Thanks, Lily and anon. Live link to the excellent Yoga Journal article mentioned above.

By Ilona Meagher, at 8/19/2008 05:04:00 PM