| | What Doctors Don't Tell You: Tranks prove fatal to asthmatics | |
Asthma sufferers are more than three times as likely to die from an attack if they have taken a major tranquillizer in the previous 12 months. Even sufferers who had given up taking the tranquillizers were still at high risk of suffering a fatal or near-fatal asthma attack.
Doctors have been warned about prescribing tranquillizers to their asthma patients as a result of these findings. Researchers from McGill University in Montreal, Canada made the discovery after analyzing 131 cases of death or near death following an asthma attack (BMJ, January 13, 1996).