Yoga for Persons with Rheumatoid Arthritis

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic, painful disease resulting in disability, difficulty with activities and poor quality of life (QOL). Exercise is recommended to reduce symptoms, slow progression and decrease muscle wasting. Unfortunately, most RA patients are sedentary. Yoga is an ancient Indian form including physical poses, deep breathing, relaxation and meditation, which may benefit RA patients. This is a small RCT (N=40) of an 8-week yoga intervention. Inclusion criteria are: age 18 or older, RA diagnosis, sedentary but able to exercise, stable disease for 6 months, no use of assistive devices for walking, and no co-morbid conditions with similar symptoms. Participants are randomized to immediate treatment or waitlist control. The intervention includes 2 hour-long classes per week and one hour of home practice. Outcomes are measured at baseline, midpoint, end of classes and 6 months later. These include QOL, physical fitness, psychological wellbeing and disease activity. Baseline data is available for 31 patients. Eleven have completed intervention (6) or control (5). At baseline, RA patients had lower QOL than healthy norms, especially for physical domains. After 8 weeks of yoga, the intervention group improved on all impaired domains, compared to controls (p<.05). Other outcomes have not yet been assessed. Although this data is based only on the first cohort, yoga shows promise for improving QOL in patients with RA. Further investigation is necessary to determine the sustainability of these benefits.