The next time you’re short of breath, the reason may not be as simple as it seems.

A study by a research team in Seattle found that there is a strong link between asthma and depression and anxiety disorders.

“The results were what we expected, based on observations in the field and what previous research had suggested, though the incidence was found to be much higher than we had expected,” Paul Lozano, a UW pediatrician on the team, said.

The study looked at more than 1,300 youths from ages 11 to 17 who were enrolled at the Seattle-based Group Health Cooperative.

“It was all optional, [but] it was easy to find participants,” Lozano said. “There are many parents of adolescents with asthma who want to find out how to better treat their children.”

The researchers tested for depressive and anxiety disorders, including, among other things, depression, panic disorders and social phobia. The study found that about 16 percent of youths with asthma have depressive or anxiety disorders, compared to about 8 percent among those without asthma.

When controlled for factors such as age, sex or race, Lozano explained, “someone is twice as likely to have depressive or anxiety disorders if they have asthma as someone who does not.”

“Participants were enrolled for nine months,” Lozano said. “When we began evaluating the results, we realized they were high and we needed to compare them to youths without asthma,” he said. “So we enrolled youths who didn’t have asthma and compared the results.”

The connection is no surprise to the researchers.

“In the field there’s a known overlap between symptoms of anxiety and depression,” said Laura Richardson, another UW pediatrician involved in the study. “We also see these symptoms among some patients who have diabetes and lung disease. Through the study we wanted to know if children also had these symptoms.”

Both Lozano and Richardson agreed that the next step is educating health care providers on the prevalence of anxiety and depressive disorders among patients with asthma and trying to disseminate information on how to screen for these disorders.

The study used two short surveys already available in the field to compare against the extensive survey they developed.

“One was the anxiety sensitivity index questionnaire … and we found the shorter surveys can be effective,” Lozano said.

She said that the surveys can be distributed among health providers. Richardson added that the shorter surveys complimented the work of the longer surveys.

“There are many ways to screen for anxiety and depressive disorders, including a diagnostics interview and a symptom screening,” she said. “The longer survey and the shorter ones complimented each other.”

The team was composed of researchers from the University of Washington, Group Health Cooperative and Seattle Children’s Hospital Research Institute.

“Many people know Group Health as a health provider, but they also have a center for health studies, an academic institute, which is where we did our work,” Lozano said. “We came to them with our proposal and went through the application process and got accepted. … We are grateful to the Group Health families who participated in the study.”

[Reach reporter Chris Paredes at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]