Asthma is a chronic reversible respiratory problem commonly seen by Family Physicians. Pregnancy can produce physiological and physical changes that can affect the severity of asthma and its management. Conversely poorly controlled asthmatic attacks can result in adverse obstetric outcome: prematurity, low birth weight babies, foetal hypoxia and increased maternal and foetal morbidity and mortality. It is important that Family Physicians should be able to manage competently and provide appropriate counseling for women with asthma in pregnancy, labour and lactation. Assessment of asthma control using a peak flow meter is recommended. The use of the usual inhaled and oral corticosteroids, beta 2 agonists, cromones and anticholinergics are generally safe in pregnancy, labour and lactation. But methylxanthines should be used with caution. Women should be advised that asthma medication would not adversely affect their unborn babies and the birth outcome of well-controlled asthmatic women approaches that of the normal population but uncontrolled asthma would be detrimental to the health of mother and child.
Cross-sensory correspondences can reflect crosstalk between aligned conceptual feature dimensions, though uncertainty remains regarding the identities of all the dimensions involved. It is unclear, for example, if heaviness contributes to correspondences separately from size. Taking steps to dissociate variations in heaviness from variations in size, the question was asked if a heaviness-brightness correspondence will induce a congruity effect during the speeded brightness classification of simple visual stimuli. Participants classified the stimuli according to whether they were brighter or darker than the mid-gray background against which they appeared. They registered their speeded decisions by manipulating (e.g., tapping) the object they were holding in either their left or right hand (e.g., left for bright, right for dark). With these two otherwise identical objects contrasting in their weight, stimuli were classified more quickly when the relative heaviness of the object needing to be manipulated corresponded with the brightness of the stimulus being classified (e.g., the heavier object for a darker stimulus). This novel congruity effect, in the guise of a stimulus-response (S-R) compatibility effect, was induced when heaviness was isolated as an enduring feature of the object needing to be manipulated. It was also undiminished when participants completed a concurrent verbal memory load task, countering claims that the heaviness-brightness correspondence is verbally mediated. Heaviness, alongside size, appears to contribute to cross-sensory correspondences in its own right and in a manner confirming the far-reaching influence of correspondences, extending here to the fluency with which people communicate simple ideas by manipulating a hand-held object.