The relationship of experimentally produced asthmatic attacks to certain acute life stresses

Abstract

was used as a measure of the response to stress, showed two main mechanisms associated with acutely elevated blood pressures in healthy normotensives. One pattern was similar to that obtained after the injection of synthetic epinephrine (increased pulse rate, increased cardiac output, and decreased peripheral resistance), and the other pattern was similar to that obtained after the injection of nor-epinephrine (unchanged, slightly increased or decreased pulse, decreased cardiac output and increased peripheral resistance). Hickam, Cargill, and GoldenlO and Goldenberg and associates* reported similar findings. In the study reported in this paper, the cardiovascular responses of asthmatic patients to psychologic stresses were correlated with the severity and duration of asthmatic attacks experimentally produced by the injection of the drug Mecholyl.