Hyperventilation occurs during lactate-induced panic

Abstract

Previous work has indicated hyperventilation to be an important concomitant of laboratory provoked anxiety in patients with panic disorder and of anxiety disorder in general. This has led to considerable speculation about the role of hyperventilation in the pathogenesis of panic attacks. We studied minute ventilation changes in 32 patients with panic disorder and 9 normal controls during sodium lactate infusion. The group of patients who had acute panic attacks during the infusion had greater increase in minute ventilation over baseline than patients or controls who did not experience panic attacks. This provides further confirmation that hyperventilation occurs during panic attacks.