Yoga’s effect on inflammatory biomarkers and metabolic risk factors in a high risk population – a controlled trial in primary care

Abstract

BackgroundYoga can reduce blood pressure and has also been suggested to reduce inflammatory biomarkers and metabolic risk factors for cardiovascular diseases (CVDs). We aimed to assess the benefit of two yoga interventions on inflammatory biomarkers and metabolic risk factors in a high risk population in primary care.MethodsAdult patients from a health care center in Sweden, with diagnosed hypertension, were invited to undergo a baseline check at the health care center. Baseline check included standardized blood pressure measurement, BMI and weight circumference measurements, blood sampling (hs-CRP, IL-6, FP-glucose, HbA1c, cholesterol, TG, LDL and HDL) and a questionnaire on self-rated quality of life (WHOQOL-BREF). There were three groups: 1) yoga class with yoga instructor; 2) yoga at home; and 3) a control group. In total, 83 patients were included and matched at the group level for systolic blood pressure. A majority of the patients (92 %) were on antihypertensive medication, which they were requested not to change during the study. After 12 weeks of intervention, the assessments were performed again.ResultsWe recorded no evidence that yoga altered inflammatory biomarkers or metabolic risk factors in our study population. A total of 49 participants (59 %) met the criteria for metabolic syndrome.ConclusionThe yoga interventions performed in our study did not affect inflammatory biomarkers or metabolic risk factors associated with CVD in the study population of primary care patients with hypertension. Further randomized trials are needed to elucidate the effects of yoga on CVD risk factors in this particular group.Trail registrationNCT01302535, February 22, 2011.

Impact of Yoga on Inflammatory Biomarkers: A Systematic Review

“…The review included three studies with quasi-experimental designs (Cho, Moon, & Kim, 2015; Parma et al, 2015; Wolff et al, 2015) and two single-group pre–post studies (Sarvottam, Magan, Yadav, Mehta, & Mahapatra, 2013; Yadav, Magan, Mehta, Sharma, & Mahapatra, 2012), with the remaining 10 studies being randomized controlled trials. A total of five studies had waitlist control groups (Harkess, Ryan, Delfabbro, & Cohen-Woods, 2016; Kiecolt-Glaser et al, 2014; Rajbhoj, Shete, Verma, & Bhogal, 2015; Shete, Verma, Kulkarni, & Bhogal, 2017; Singh, Bhandari, & Rana, 2011) and four used usual-care or no-treatment groups (Cho et al, 2015; Pullen et al, 2008; Pullen et al, 2010; Wolff et al, 2015). Neither the waitlist control nor the usual-care groups were matched in general structure to the treatment groups in any of the relevant studies, which can threaten internal validity and impact the study outcomes (Mohr et al, 2009).…”

“…Two studies provided education as a control condition (Bower et al, 2014; Rao et al, 2017), and one used equal time and attention (Sohl et al, 2016). Finally, two of the studies used three-arm intervention trials comparing yoga against two control groups (Parma et al, 2015; Wolff et al, 2015).…”

“…Hatha yoga was the most common style named across the studies, with five of the selected articles describing interventions using this type of yoga (Cho et al, 2015; Kiecolt-Glaser et al, 2014; Parma et al, 2015; Pullen et al, 2008; Pullen et al, 2010) and two reporting using a type of hatha yoga, Iyengar (Bower et al, 2014), and Ashtanga (Harkess, 2016; Harkess et al, 2016). Another six studies did not identify the type of yoga used (Rajbhoj et al, 2015; Rao et al, 2017; Sarvottam et al, 2013; Singh et al, 2011; Sohl et al, 2016; Yadav et al, 2012), while one used medical kundalini yoga (Wolff et al, 2015), and another described the style as a “classical yoga” grounded in the principles of the Kaivalyadhama Yoga Institute (Shete et al, 2017).…”

“…For each study, we calculated the total dose in minutes of yoga practice to discern the effect of dose on the outcome of inflammation. Although seven of the studies (Kiecolt-Glaser et al, 2014; Parma et al, 2015; Pullen et al, 2008; Pullen et al, 2010; Rao et al, 2017; Sohl et al, 2016; Wolff, Memon, Chalmers, Sundquist, & Midlov, 2015) reported giving instructions to practice yoga at home, we used only supervised yoga minutes to calculate the dose due to lack of overall minutes reported for yoga at home. We multiplied session length in minutes by frequency per week by duration in weeks to calculate the total dose in minutes of yoga practice per study.…”

Kardiometabolikus betegségek megelőzése és gyógyítása jógával

“…A svéd Kundalini-jógát használták 28 metabolikus szindrómás, hypertoniás, gyógyszert szedő betegen heti 60 perc felügyelt és otthoni minden nap 30 perces jógagyakorlással a "szokásos kezeléssel" szemben. Bár a szerzők korábbi tanulmányában a Kundalini-jóga vérnyomáscsökkenést váltott ki, ebben a vizsgálatban változott a vérnyomás és a vérparaméterek változatlanok maradtak, amit a szerzők a maximális vérnyomáscsökkentő gyógyszereléssel magyaráztak [31].…”