In heart failure, a weakly pumping heart allows fluid to build up until patients gasp for breath.

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And as people get squeezed by the financial correction, they gasp for breath.

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Cases of the bacterial disease pertussis, nicknamed for the "whoop" sufferers sometimes make as they gasp for breath after a long coughing spell, have risen from 1, 010 in 1976 to over 25, 000 today, according to the CDC.

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