Yoga can be used as an adjunct therapy in the management of severe arthritis, observes Dr Rima Dada, Prof Lab for Molecular Reproduction and Genetics, Department of Anatomy at the All Indian Institute of Medical Science.
The research paper titled, 'Yoga impact on autoimmune arthritis' states that Yoga tackle both the articular and extra-articular symptoms and also decrease the severity of co-morbid depression.
Yoga improves clinical outcome in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) and decreases systemic inflammation by its beneficial effects on the psycho-neuro-immune axis and normalisation of dysregulated transcripts, the study reads.
It also says that Yoga significantly improves and reduces the psycho-somatic symptoms, pain perception, disability quotient, joint flexibility, range of motion, posture, muscle strength, coordination and disease activity.
Dr Dada told ANI, "The most significant finding is that rheumatoid arthritis is a very severe progressive arthritis in which there are articular as well as extra-articular symptoms which involve the lung, the heart, the brain and the skin. Yoga can be used as an adjourned therapy in the management of severe arthritis because the factor which caused articular symptoms, inflammatory cytokine when you do yoga they decrease."
In a significant observation, the doctor found improvement in the mitochondrial integrity (after damage) by yoga.
"In addition to that, we found that various transcripts including expression of various genes which promoted immune homeostasis also increased and gene which was helping, which were the antioxidant gene expression went up," Dr Dada observed.
The finding stresses that yoga helps in decreasing stress hormones level, and various factors which helped in promoting neuroplasticity level increased.
The study has been done in collaboration with Dr Uma Kumar Prof and Head Department of Rheumatology.
In addition to the Disease-modifying antirheumatic drugs (DMARDs), Yoga can reduce the severity of the disease. It helps in the reestablishment of immunological tolerance, the Doctor says.
( With inputs from ANI )
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