TORONTO - Italian doctors say social networking could be a real-life source of stress after studying the case of a young man whose asthma attacks appear to have been triggered by seeing his ex on Facebook.
The case study reported in The Lancet this week involves an 18-year-old man in Italy whose girlfriend had broken up with him, leaving him depressed. The woman had also booted him from her list of Facebook friends while "friending" new young men in the process.
Using a new nickname, the man was able to land back on the ex-girlfriend's friend list where he was able to see her photo on her online profile.
The five doctors who reported on the case say that repeatedly accessing the woman's profile and seeing her photo appeared to cause dyspnea, which is difficult or laboured breathing.
The patient's mother was advised to ask him to measure his breathing before and after he was on Facebook and found a more than 20 per cent difference. Following a consultation with a psychiatrist, he decided to sign off Facebook for good and his asthma attacks stopped.
The patient was using steroids twice daily in addition to montelukast, an oral drug, to control his asthma symptoms.
He took them throughout the year except during the summer, when exposure to house dust mites is lower in Italy. Yet his symptoms had worsened prior to seeing the team of Italian doctors and he had to take relief medications at times.
Dr. Gennaro D'Amato and his colleagues say the timing of the onset of symptoms suggests that being on to Facebook was what triggered the attacks "in which hyperventilation may have played a key role."
They conclude that the case shows that social networks could be a "new source of psychological stress" and trigger attacks in depressed asthmatics.
But Toronto-based allergist Dr. Mark Greenwald said this might be a bit of a stretch.
Greenwald, who chairs the medical and science committee of the Asthma Society of Canada, said that since the patient's symptoms had worsened prior to seeing researchers, he wasn't as well-controlled as he should have been.
What's more, his disordered breathing could have been hyperventilation, so it's not known for sure if he was having an asthma attack, he noted.
"The long-term control of asthma was the key issue here, not necessarily the specifics of the trigger," said Greenwald, who is also an associate professor at the University of Toronto.
"To propose that the specific Facebook trigger is something that should be put among your list of things to look for, no I don't think they have a good case here to make that statement, rather than we do know somebody who's already out of control and they have additional stresses and they start hyperventilating. This could happen with basically anything."
