Relationships among panic-fear personality, aging, and ventilatory activity.

We have studied 204 healthy male subjects ranging in age from 20 to 59 years. They were divided into four 10-year age groups. Each age group was further divided into 2 subgroups with high and low Panic-Fear scores. The ventilatory activities of all the groups were compared. In the younger generation (20-39 years), the low PF group revealed a higher slope in CO2 response curve than the high PF group (p less than 0.05). This result was considered to be related to the difference in CO2 production between the two groups. In the older age groups, however, the high PF subjects exhibited a tendency to increase the CO2 response slope with increasing ages. This contradictory result was thought to be due to the age dependent change in biogenic amine activity.