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Article: Heartburn and wheezing may have something in common.
- Article from:
- Medical Update
- Article date:
- September 1, 1991
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 1991 Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society, Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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A report at the recent meeting of the American College of Gastroenterology suggests that some forms of asthma may be related to heartburn, that painful sensation beneath the lower breastbone that actually has nothing to do with the heart.
Doctors examined a group of 26 asthmatic patients in a Springfield, Illinois, pulmonary clinic to see what was causing their symptoms. Was the same gastric juice that had been causing some of the patients to have heartburn also irritating their airways? Gastric juice is produced in the stomach (the lining of which is impervious to its acid content), but sometimes it backs up into the esophagus. The esophageal lining then ...