Control of Ventilation, Breathlessness Perception and Alexithymia in Near-Fatal Asthma
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Several studies have demonstrated impaired control of ventilation in some patients with near-fatal asthma (NFA). The objective of our study was to determine a possible relationship between alexithymia (a cognitive processing disorder), control of ventilation, and breathlessness perception in patients who had an NFA attack. We analyzed data from 100 subjects: 50 with NFA, 25 asthmatics without NFA, and 25 non-asthmatic controls. Ventilatory responses to hypoxia and hypercapnia were measured by the rebreathing technique in terms of slope of ventilation and mouth occlusion pressure (P0.1). Breathlessness perception was assessed with the Borg scale and alexithymia with the Toronto Alexithymia Scale (TAS). No statistical differences were observed between groups in breathlessness perception and ventilatory responses. The mean (SD) TAS score of 63.6 (14.9) in the NFA group was significantly higher than the score of 56.4 (12.1) in the non-asthmatic group (p = 0.007). More subjects with alexithymia were identified in the NFA group (24%) than in the non-NFA group (12%) or the non-asthmatic control group (12%). Although the presence of alexithymia did not correlate with poor ventilatory responses or breathlessness perception, it was associated with a larger number of previous hospitalisations: 6.2 (8.1) in the NFA group and 2.8 (4.8) in the non-NFA group (p = 0.036). In conclusion, the prevalence of alexithymia is higher among NFA patients than among asthmatics who have not experienced NFA attacks. Neither altered breathlessness perception nor ventilatory response to hypoxia seems to play a role in NFA, although alexithymia may favor poor clinical control.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.002 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".