HISTORY OF EMOTIONALLY TRIGGERED ASTHMA AS A PREDICTOR OF AIRWAY RESPONSE TO SUGGESTION.
Contributors: University of California, San Francisco.
Published: 1983
Number of pages: 122
Subjects: Health Sciences, Nursing.
Description: Concepts of emotional arousal, suggestion, and bronchial hyperreactivity in asthma were synthesized to form the theoretical basis of this study. The airway response to suggestion in certain asthmatics appears to be mediated through the efferent limb of the parasympathetic nervous system and therefore may be amenable to autonomically directed therapies such as biofeedback training. A rapid, efficient method of detecting this subgroup of asthmatics was sought, i.e. by identification of asthmatics who respond to emotional arousal with bronchospasm.

The primary purpose of this study was to determine whether asthmatics who report emotionally triggered asthma also respond to bronchoconstrictive suggestion. The secondary purpose was to determine the predictive validity of the Asthma Trigger Index (ATI). This instrument, designed by the investigator, was used to measure history of asthmatic response to emotions.

Twenty-nine male and female adult asthmatics completed the ATI to determine history of response to emotional triggers of asthma and then were subjected to bronchoconstrictive suggestion in a laboratory setting. Subjects were told they were inhaling a bronchoconstricting agent in four increasingly potent concentrations, when in fact the solution the subjects inhaled was nebulized isotonic saline. Ten subjects (34% of the sample) responded to suggestion with a greater than 20 percent increase in specific airway resistance (SRaw), but this response could not be predicted by the report of perceived emotional triggers of asthma on the ATI (r = 0.25, p = 0.25). The effect of nebulized saline on SRaw was evaluated and found to be nonsignificant. Seven subjects responded to suggestion with physical symptoms associated with asthma, but only three of these subjects developed significant change in SRaw.

The ATI, which was shown to have face and content validity as well as test-retest reliability (r = 0.90, p = 0.0007), may have clinical usefulness as a screening tool to assess the triggers to which a particular asthmatic responds.

The findings that the perceived history of asthmatic response to emotional arousal does not predict airway response to bronchoconstrictive suggestion may mean that emotion and suggestion are not the same provocational stimulus as has been assumed in the past.
Notes: Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 45-08, Section: B, page: 2497.

Thesis (D.N.S.)--UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, SAN FRANCISCO, 1983.

School code: 0034.