Are you a Facebook addict? Beware, it may get you an asthma attack, scientists claim. A team of Italian doctors, who looked at a young man who had reportedly suffered several asthma attacks after logging into Facebook, said social networking websites could be a new source of psychological stress for depressed people.

According to their report, published in the medical journal The Lancet, the 18-year-old young man was depressed because his girlfriend had broken up with him. She also deleted him from Facebook, while “friending” many new young men. With a new nickname on Facebook, the young man succeeded in becoming her friend once again and finally in seeing her picture on her Facebook profile. But the sight of her girlfriend seemed to induce shortness of breath, which happened repeatedly on the patient accessing her profile.

“This  case indicates that Facebook, and social networks in general, could be a new source of psychological stress, representing a triggering factor for exacerbations in depressed asthamatic individuals,” the doctors of High Speciality Hospital Cardarelli in Naples said.

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