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eCAM Advance Access first published online on July 13, 2007
This version published online on August 27, 2007
eCAM, doi:10.1093/ecam/nem048
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© 2007 The Author(s).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Tai Chi for Disease Activity and Flexibility in Patients with Ankylosing Spondylitis—A Controlled Clinical Trial

Eun-Nam Lee1, Young-Hee Kim1, Won Tae Chung2 and Myeong Soo Lee3,*

1Department of Nursing and, 2Department of Internal Medicine, Dong-A University, Busan 604-714 and 3Center for Integrative Medicine, Institute of Medical Science, Wonkwang University, Iksan 570-749, South Korea

We investigated the effects of tai chi on disease activity, flexibility and depression in patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS). We allocated 40 patients to either a tai chi treatment group or a no-treatment control group. The tai chi group performed 60 min of tai chi twice weekly for eight consecutive weeks and 8 weeks of home-based tai chi, after which the group showed significant improvement in disease activity and flexibility compared to the control group. All outcome measures were significantly lower in the tai chi group than they were during pre-treatment, while they did not change in the control group. These findings suggest that tai chi can improve disease activity and flexibility for patients with AS. Tai chi is an easily accessible therapy for patients and, as such, may be an effective intervention for AS. However, we cannot completely discount the possibility that the placebo effect was responsible for the improvement.

Keywords: ankylosing spondylitis – disease activity – flexibility – tai chi

*Present address: Complementary Medicine, Peninsula Medial School, Universities of Exeter & Plymouth, Exeter, UK For reprints and all correspondence: Myeong Soo Lee, Ph.D., Complementary Medicine, Peninsula Medical School, Universities of Exeter & Plymouth, Exeter, EX2 4NT, UK. Tel: (44-0)1392-439035; Fax: (44-0)1392-427562; E-mail: myeong.lee{at}pms.ac.uk or drmslee{at}gmail.com

Received January 12, 2007; accepted April 2, 2007


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