Positive Impacts of a Four-Week Neuro-Meditation Program on Cognitive Function in Post-Acute Sequelae of COVID-19 Patients: A Randomized Controlled Trial
- Publisher:
- MDPI
- Publication Type:
- Journal Article
- Citation:
- International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2023, 20, (2), pp. 1361
- Issue Date:
- 2023-01-11
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Study objective Long COVID patients can experience high levels of impairment in their cognitive function and mental health Using a parallel randomized control trial we evaluated the effectiveness of a neuro meditation program to reduce cognitive impairment in patients with long COVID Methods A total of 34 patients with long COVID were randomized to an intervention group G Int n 17 or a control group G Con n 17 and 15 healthy participants were constitutive of a normative group G Nor The intervention consisted of ten 30 min sessions of Rebalance over a period of five weeks Each session included sound therapy and coach guided meditation associated with light stimulations i e chromotherapy Primary outcomes were performance on five computerized cognitive tasks choice response time pattern comparison Simon pursuit rotor task and Corsi block tapping task mental and physical fatigue Chalder fatigue scale perceived stress perceived stress scale and mood profiles of mood states Secondary outcomes were anxiety and depressive symptoms hospital anxiety and depression scale muscular pain joint pain and headaches using visual analog scales VAS as well as sleep quality Spiegel sleep questionnaire Assessments were conducted at baseline and at 1 2 and 7 8 days of follow up Results Compared to healthy subjects long COVID patients showed significant differences at baseline on all the self report questionnaires and a Rebalance program improved all the subjective reports as well as cognitive performances especially on reaction time based tasks In particular only the G Int group revealed shortened reaction times in the choice reaction time RTbaseline 593 121 ms vs RTpost2 521 86 ms p 0 001 Simon RTbaseline 539 123 ms vs RTpost2 494 134 ms p 0 01 and pattern comparison tasks RTbaseline 1244 315 ms vs RTpost2 1079 213 ms p 0 001 Conclusions Initial evidence suggests that neuro meditation reduces cognitive impairment and improves physical and mental fatigue muscle and joint pain symptoms of
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