A recent study found that the sustained lung inflammation from asthma can lead to anxiety.
“The idea of studying this link between asthma and anxiety is a pretty new area, and right now we don’t know what the connection is,” Sonia Cavigelli, PhD, associate professor of biobehavioral health, Penn State College of Health and Human Development, said. “What we saw in the mice was that attacks of labored breathing may cause short-term anxiety, but that long-term effects may be due to lasting lung inflammation.”
Researchers not only determined that children and adolescents with asthma are 2-3 times more likely to develop an internalizing disorder such as anxiety or depression later in life, they also found a direct correlation between exposure to an allergen and long-term lung inflammation which is linked to the development of anxiety disorders in adulthood, according to the study.
