Facebook peeks spark asthma attacks in dumped boy

[Celebration]

http://www.physorg.com/news/2010-11-facebook-peeks-asthma-dumped-boy.html

Gennaro D'Amato and colleagues treated an 18-year-old man whose asthma attacks were apparently sparked by logging into Facebook and seeing how many men his ex-girlfriend had friended.

The man had been taking two inhaled steroid drugs several times a day to control his asthma. But when his girlfriend dumped him - and worse, unfriended him on Facebook - his condition deteriorated.

Using a new nickname, the man re-friended his ex-girlfriend on the social networking site. But the stress of seeing her photo on Facebook linked to so many new male friends was too much.

"The sight of this seemed to induce (shortness of breath), which happened repeatedly on the patient accessing her profile," wrote D'Amato of the High Specialty Hospital A Cardarelli in Naples, Italy and colleagues. Their letter was published Friday in the medical journal Lancet.

[petronius]

1. I guess it's a good thing he didn't sneak into her house and read her diary, then...

I don't see how the (non-existent) scientific merit of this report is worth the new global humiliation of asthma-dude, but it is funny... :)

[Posteritatis]

2. Headline should read "dumped boy sparks asthma attacks in dumped boy."

I know the news has to spin up stuff like that, but the type of person who stalks exes under assumed names and then freaks out regularly upon doing so is suffering from a self-inflicted injury.

[Lex]

3. Man: Doc, it hurts when I do this. Doc: Don't do that.

nt