'WhatsAppitis' is a real disease: Lancet

What if you are told that excessive chatting or texting on 'WhatsApp' messenger service can hamper your health to an extent that you get a thumb disease! "WhatsAppitis" is real, and happening.

A report in the prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, said that "WhatsAppitis" is a credible disease, after a doctor in Spain diagnosed a 34-year-old female patient with bilateral wrist pain induced by excessive use of 'WhatsApp'.

"She held her mobile phone for at least six hours and continuously used both thumbs to send messages to relatives and friends," Spanish physician Ines M Fernandez-Guerrero wrote in the journal.

The next morning, that woman woke up with aching wrists.

"The diagnosis for the bilateral wrist pain was 'WhatsAppitis'," Fernandez-Guerrero added.

He treated the woman with non-steroidal, anti-inflammatory drugs and asked her to completely avoid using the cell phone to send messages.

"Initially reported in children, such cases are now seen in adults. 'Tenosynovitis' caused by texting with mobile phones could well be an emerging disease," the doctor has warned.

Physicians need to be careful of these new disorders coming to the fore owing to the hand-held technology, Fernandez-Guerrero cautioned.