This article is more than 5 years old. Information may no longer be current.

Emotions play critical role in dyspnea-related cues in COPD

Depression, fatigue and vigilance play a role in shaping brain mechanisms associated with interpretation of dyspnea-related cues in patients with COPD, according to study results.

The researchers indicate that heightened responses to important cues associated with increased symptom perception in disorders such as asthma may now be relevant in patients with COPD.

Mari Herigstad, DPhil, an early career research fellow at Oxford Brookes University in the United Kingdom, and colleagues used functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) to investigate brain responses to dyspnea-related word cues in 41 patients with COPD and 40 healthy age-matched participants. The researchers attempted to see if brain activity related to such cues would be different between the two groups.

The participants completed self-reported questionnaires prior to FMRI to assess respiratory perception and emotions such as depression and anxiety.

The researchers showed participants a random set of dyspnea-related word cues during scanning. The participants had to rate each word according to how breathless and how anxious a word made them feel on a visual analogue score.

Patients with COPD had a higher score than the healthy participants in the majority of the questionnaires except one. During scanning, patients rated word cues higher for dyspnea (53.6) than did the healthy participants (8.4). Patients also rated dyspnea-anxiety (43.1) higher than controls (5.8) during scanning (P < .001 for both).

The researchers acknowledge the results indicate emotions in patients with COPD can trigger dyspnea, however future research is needed.

“Future work would look more in detail at these structures and how interventions may affect dyspnea processing,” the researchers wrote. “Understanding the neural processing of dyspnea in a clinical population is crucial for advances to be made in its treatment, for example the development of neuroimaging biomarkers that allow patient stratification leading to individualized treatments.” – by Ryan McDonald

Disclosure: The researchers report no relevant financial disclosures.