Yoga in addition to standard care for patients with haematological malignancies.

BACKGROUND

Haematological malignancies are malignant neoplasms of the myeloid or lymphatic cell lines including leukaemia, lymphoma and myeloma. In order to manage physical and psychological aspects of the disease and its treatment, complementary therapies like yoga are coming increasingly into focus. However, the effectiveness of yoga practice for people suffering from haematological malignancies remains unclear.

OBJECTIVES

To assess the effects of yoga practice in addition to standard cancer treatment for people with haematological malignancies.

SEARCH METHODS

Our search strategy included the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials (CENTRAL), MEDLINE (1950 to 4th February 2014), databases of ongoing trials (controlled-trials.com; clinicaltrials.gov), conference proceedings of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the American Society of Hematology, the European Haematology Association, the European Congress for Integrative Medicine, and Global Advances in Health and Medicine. We handsearched references of these studies from identified trials and relevant review articles. Two review authors independently screened the search results.

SELECTION CRITERIA

We included randomised controlled trials (RCTs) of yoga in addition to standard care for haematological malignancies compared with standard care only. We did not restrict this to any specific style of yoga.

DATA COLLECTION AND ANALYSIS

Two review authors independently extracted data for eligible studies and assessed the risk of bias according to predefined criteria. We evaluated distress, fatigue, anxiety, depression and quality of sleep. Further outcomes we planned to assess were health-related quality of life (HRQoL), overall survival (OS) and adverse events (AE), but data on these were not available.

MAIN RESULTS

Our search strategies led to 149 potentially relevant references, but only a single small study met our inclusion criteria. The included study was published as a full text article and investigated the feasibility and effect of Tibetan Yoga additional to standard care (N = 20; 1 person dropped out before attending any classes and no data were collected) compared to standard care only (N = 19). The study included people with all stages of Hodgkin and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, with and without current cancer treatment. The mean age was 51 years.We judged the overall risk of bias as high as we found a high risk for performance, detection and attrition bias. Additionally, potential outcome reporting bias could not be completely ruled out. Following the recommendations of GRADE, we judged the overall quality of the body of evidence for all predefined outcomes as 'very low', due to the methodical limitations and the very small sample size.The influence of yoga on HRQoL and OS was not reported. There is no evidence that yoga in addition to standard care compared with standard care only can improve distress in people with haematological malignancies (mean difference (MD) -0.30, 95% confidence interval (CI) -5.55 to 4.95; P = 0.91). Similarly, there is no evidence of a difference between either group for fatigue (MD 0.00, 95% CI -0.94 to 0.94; P = 1.00), anxiety (MD 0.30, 95% CI -5.01 to 5.61; P = 0.91) or depression (MD -0.70, 95% CI -3.21 to 1.81; P = 0.58).There is very low quality evidence that yoga improves the overall quality of sleep (MD -2.30, 95% CI -3.78 to -0.82; P = 0.002). The yoga groups' total score for the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI) was 5.8 (± 2.3 SD) and better than the total score (8.1 (± 2.4 SD)) of the control group. A PSQI total score of 0 to 5 indicates good sleep whereas PSQI total score 6 to 21 points towards significant sleep disturbances. The occurrence of AEs was not reported.

AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS: The currently available data provide little information about the effectiveness of yoga interventions for people suffering from haematological malignancies. The finding that yoga may be beneficial for the patients' quality of sleep is based on a very small body of evidence. Therefore, the role of yoga as an additional therapy for haematological malignancies remains unclear. Further high-quality randomised controlled trials with larger numbers of participants are needed to make a definitive statement.