Clinical Trial currently seeking participants. Location: Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology, UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute Recruiting Los Angeles, California, Inclusion criteria: Older than 55 years of age at time of entry, difficulties with sleep for a minimum of 3 nights per week, and sleep-onset delay, maintenance insomnia, or terminal insomnia.
"Preliminary studies found that Tai Chi Chih (TCC), a slow moving meditation, contributes to improvements in subjective sleep quality, sleep amounts and sleep efficiency, alterations in sympathetic activity, decreases in proinflammatory cytokines, and improvements in health functioning in community-dwelling older adults. Additionally, cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) confers benefits on sleep outcomes.
"In this randomized, controlled trial, 150 older adults will be randomly assigned to CBT, TCC, or sleep hygiene/education control (EC) over 16 weeks and followed for one year. The aims of this project are to: 1) evaluate the effects of CBT vs TCC vs. EC on objective and subjective measures of sleep and on fatigue, mood, and health functioning in older adults with insomnia; 2) determine the effects of CBT vs.TCC vs. EC on measures of proinflammatory cytokine activity and sympathovagal balance, and whether these two biological mechanisms are related to changes of disordered sleep over the course of the treatment trial; and 3) evaluate whether circulating levels of proinflammatory cytokines are associated with measures of sleep continuity in older adults with insomnia over the treatment trial. This study will advance psychobiological models of disordered sleep and the potential benefits of two readily exportable behavioral interventions for promoting improvements in sleep outcomes in the elderly." Additional details: ClinicalTrials.gov.
