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.