Doctors have added one more human malady to the list of diseases made worse by job-related stress, saying worries about losing a job can raise the risk of asthma.
The researchers studied 7,000 working adults in Germany during the economic recession between the years 2009 to 2011.
They were surveyed as part of the German Socio-Economic Panel Study, an annual polling of the German population.
The workers were asked about any experience of asthma, and also whether they had feared for their job security during those 2 years.
During the study period doctors diagnosed 100 new first-time asthma cases of among the study participants.
For each 25 percent increase in job-related stresses, there was a similar leap -- 24 percent -- in the risk of developing asthma, the researchers reported in the Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health.
For those in the study who expressed a very strong likelihood they could lose their jobs, the number was even higher, at 60 percent as against the numbers for those who though losing their jobs was unlikely.
While not an irrefutable study, the researchers write, the findings are "consistent with [other] epidemiological studies, which have shown that psychological stress, in particular work related stress, may be risk factors for new onset asthma."
Those in the survey expressing the highest expectation of losing their employment tended to be slightly younger, with less education and making less money per month, the researchers discovered.
They also tended to be single, working on a temporary contract basis, and proved more likely to exhibit signs of depression, the study found.
Temporary contracts and other "flexible forms of contracting" as well as downsizing were identified as factors that "increase job insecurity among employees," the researchers said.
The findings of the study, which was conducted by researchers from the University of Düsseldorf, the University of Amsterdam and Massey University in New Zealand, suggest the elevated risk of asthma was prevalent in all of Europe, they said.
"The economic crisis in Europe, which started in 2008, has accelerated this development and has been paralleled by increased perceptions of job insecurity in most European Union countries," they said in the report on their study.
Stress is a well-known trigger for asthma symptoms, said Dr. Samantha Walker, director of Research and Policy at Asthma UK.
"Years of under-funding of asthma research means that there is still much for us to learn so we urge researchers to explore these findings in more detail," she said.
