Mindfulness-based meditation helps teenagers with cancer

Controlled clinical trial intervention on mood, sleep and quality of life reveals impact

2014-03-14

(Press-News.org) This news release is available in French.

Mindfulness-based meditation could lessen some symptoms associated with cancer in teens, according to the results of a clinical trial intervention led by researchers at the University of Montreal and its affiliated CHU Sainte-Justine children's hospital. Mindfulness-based meditation focuses on the present moment and the connection between the mind and body. Adolescents living with cancer face not only the physical symptoms of their condition, but also the anxiety and uncertainty related to the progression of the disease, the anticipation of physical and emotional pain related to illness and treatment, the significant changes implied in living with cancer, as well as the fear of recurrence after remission. Catherine Malboeuf-Hurtubise of the university's Department of Psychology presented the findings today at the American Psychosomatic Society Meeting in San Francisco.

The researchers asked 13 adolescents with cancer to complete questionnaires covering mood (positive and negative emotions, anxiety and depression), sleep and quality of life. The group was divided in two: a first group of eight adolescents were offered eight mindfulness-based meditation sessions and the remaining five adolescents in the control group were put on a wait-list. The eight sessions were 90 minutes long and took place weekly. After the last meditation session, patients from both groups filled out the same questionnaires a second time. "We analyzed differences in mood, sleep and quality of life scores for each participant and then between each group to evaluate if mindfulness sessions had a greater impact than the simple passage of time. We found that teenagers that participated in the mindfulness group had lower scores in depression after our 8 sessions. Girls from the mindfulness group reported sleeping better. We also noticed that they developed mindfulness skills to a greater extent than boys during the sessions," Malboeuf-Hurtubise said. "Our results suggest that mindfulness sessions could be helpful in improving mood and sleep in teenagers with cancer, as previous oncology research suggests with adults."

Differences between both groups were not large enough for the researchers to impute observed benefits solely to the mindfulness component of the sessions. "The social support provided to the adolescents in the mindfulness group could possibly explain observed benefits on mood and sleep," Malboeuf-Hurtubise said. "Nonetheless, mindfulness-based interventions for teenagers with cancer appear as a promising option to lighten psychological inconveniences of living with cancer." The researchers intend to offer members of the control group an opportunity to undertake the meditation sessions.

INFORMATION: Notes:

The research was supervised by Professor Marie Achille of the University of Montreal’s Department of Psychology. Dr. Majorie Vadnais of the university’s affiliated CHU Sainte-Justine Mother-Child Hospital was a member of the research team and assisted with the recruitment of participants. Marine Hardouin was Malboeuf-Hurtubise’s research assistant. Professor Serge Sultan of the University of Montreal’s Departments of Pediatrics and Psychology and researcher of the CHU Sainte-Justine, contributed to the study design. The University of Montreal is officially known as Université de Montréal.

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Education and culture affect children's understanding of the human body

2014-03-14

The study found that children as young as four and five can understand that the human body works to keep us alive. The researchers call this a 'life theory' and say it is important because it enables children to understand other related biological facts, such as what the vital organs do to keep us alive and what happens when people die. The results also have implications for teaching about the human body in schools. The research, published in the British Journal of Developmental Psychology, aimed to identify the age by which children begin to demonstrate a biological ...

Higher exposure to takeaway food outlets could double the odds of being obese

2014-03-14

People exposed to takeaway food outlets around their home, at work and on their way to work are more likely to consume more of these foods, as well as being more likely to be obese, suggest a paper published on bmj.com today. During the past decade in the UK, consumption of food away from home has risen by 29% while the number of takeaways has increased dramatically. This, the researchers say, could be contributing to rising levels of overweight and obesity. Despite increasing policy focus, identifying the association between exposures to unhealthy neighbourhood food ...

Cancer patients with insulin-treated diabetes have 4 times higher mortality compared to cancer patients without diabetes

2014-03-14

People who have diabetes at the time they are diagnosed with cancer are more likely to die early than those without diabetes, concludes research published in Diabetologia (the journal of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes). The research is by Kristina Ranc, University of Copenhagen and Steno Diabetes Center, Gentofte, Denmark, and colleagues. The researchers conclude that patients with both diabetes and cancer constitute a particularly vulnerable group, and efforts are needed to reduce cancer-related mortality among these patients. While the research base ...

Fighting for oral dominance: Good fungi keep bad ones in check in healthy mouths

2014-03-13

Human mouths contain a balanced mix of microbes which, when disrupted, can lead to oral diseases. A study published on March 13th in PLOS Pathogens compares the bacteria and fungi present in the mouths of healthy individuals with those from patients infected with HIV, and illustrates why oral candidiasis (aka "thrush") is a common complication of HIV infection. Using high-throughput gene sequencing, Mahmoud Ghannoum, from Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, USA, and colleagues catalogued the core oral bacteriome (the bacteria commonly present) and the core ...

Autism and intellectual disability incidence linked with environmental factors

2014-03-13

An analysis of 100 million US medical records reveals that autism and intellectual disability (ID) rates are correlated at the county level with incidence of genital malformations in newborn males, an indicator of possible congenital exposure to harmful environmental factors such as pesticides. Autism rates—after adjustment for gender, ethnic, socioeconomic and geopolitical factors—jump by 283 percent for every one percent increase in frequency of malformations in a county. Intellectual disability rates increase 94 percent. Slight increases in autism and ID rates are ...

Microorganism shows promise in inhibiting thrush

2014-03-13

Scientists at Case Western Reserve School of Medicine and University Hospitals (UH) Case Medical Center have discovered how the beneficial fungal yeast, Pichia, holds at bay a harmful fungal yeast, Candida. The hope for this finding is that components in Pichia could one day become therapeutic agents to stave off not only thrush, but also other life-threatening systemic fungal infections. Research findings about the effect of oral Pichia on Candida appear in the March 13 edition of PLOS Pathogens. "Our aim was to try to understand what microorganisms live in our mouths. ...

Negative effects of joining a gang last long after gang membership ends

2014-03-13

Imagine two children, both with the exact same risk factors for joining a gang. As teenagers, one joins a gang, the other doesn't. Even though the first teen eventually leaves the gang, years later he or she is not only at significantly higher risk of being incarcerated and receiving illegal income, but is also less likely to have finished high school and more likely to be in poor health, receiving government assistance or struggling with drug abuse. University of Washington researchers have found that joining a gang in adolescence has significant consequences in adulthood ...

Stroke survivors may lose month of healthy life for 15-minute delay in treatment

2014-03-13

Every 15-minute delay in delivering a clot-busting drug after stroke robs survivors of about a month of disability-free life, according to a new study in the American Heart Association journal Stroke. On the other hand, speeding treatment by just one minute means another 1.8 days of healthy life, researchers said. "'Save a minute; save a day' is the message from our study, which examined how even small reductions in treatment delays might benefit patients measurably in the long run," said Atte Meretoja, M.D., Ph.D., M.Sc., lead author of the study and associate professor ...

Mexican-Americans suffer worse outcomes after stroke

2014-03-13

Mexican-Americans had worse neurologic, functional and cognitive outcomes 90 days after stroke compared to non-Hispanic whites, in a study reported in the American Heart Association journal Stroke. Mexican-Americans have increased stroke risk, but lower risk of death compared to non-Hispanic whites. The new research suggests that prolonged survival is at the expense of increased disability. The study's stroke participants were drawn from the Brain Attack Surveillance in Corpus Christi (BASIC) project conducted in a non-immigrant south Texas community. Researchers assessed ...

Religious beliefs of American Muslims influence attitudes toward organ donation

2014-03-13

American Muslims who interpret negative events in life as punishment from God are less likely to believe that donating organs after death is ethical than those with a more positive outlook, according to a survey conducted by researchers from the University of Chicago's Program on Medicine and Religion. The study points to a complex relationship between attitudes toward organ donation and the Islamic faith. Previous research has shown that Muslims are less likely than other religious groups to believe organ donation is ethically justified, and suggests that religious values ...

Mindfulness-based meditation helps teenagers with cancer

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: