Thursday 2 December 2010

A New Asthma Treatment?

I have just entered my Peak Flow (lung function test) figures for November into the 2010 spreadsheet and I noticed something about the annual graph:




Apart from the fact that I haven't entered the December figures it starts rising in July which is when I started taking fluoxetine for my depression. Does this mean that fluoxetine helps treat asthma or that fluoxetine relaxes me so that the stress is no longer an asthma trigger?

Any views?

2 comments:

serena said...

Well, two things spring to mind.

1) Psychosomatic triggers can be part of asthma; feeling better - or feeling "treated" may help you to get better peak flows. I think sometimes people use the word psychosomatic to be dismissive, perhaps a better way of putting this is to call it a placebo effect, which doctors know works!

2) Antidepressants do all sorts of things to the brain, so you never know, they may be telling your lungs to chill out!

iamchristianhearmeroar said...

This paper here suggests it may have antiinflammatory properties in animal allergic asthma studies:

http://respiratory-research.com/content/8/1/35

So may be a genuine therapeutic effect...