Mind-body exercises for osteoarthritis: an overview of systematic reviews including 32 meta-analyses

Abstract

Purpose

To develop an overview of systematic reviews (SRs) to summarize the current evidence on the effectiveness of mind-body exercises, specifically qigong, tai chi, and yoga, on osteoarthritis-related symptoms.

Methods

CINAHL, Embase, PsycINFO, PubMed, SPORTDiscus, and the Cochrane Library were searched from inception up to 20 June 2022. Pain, physical function, psychological symptoms, and quality of life were analyzed. AMSTAR 2 was used to assess the methodological quality of SRs. The primary study overlap among SRs was calculated.

Results

A total of 13 SRs were selected, including 32 meta-analyses of interest that comprised 33 distinct primary studies. Overall, qigong, tai chi, and yoga-based interventions may improve osteoarthritis-related symptoms, mainly physical function. However, no SRs were judged to have high methodological quality. Only three SRs judged certainty of evidence using a gold standard for it. The primary study overlap was very high for SRs covering tai chi or yoga trials.

Conclusions

There was a positive tendency in favor of these mind-body exercises for improving pain, arthritis self-efficacy, and mainly, physical function. Unfortunately, no clinical recommendations can be made due to the high number of methodological concerns that were described above. New high-quality SRs covering this topic are needed.

IMPLICATIONS FOR REHABILITATION

• It appears that qigong, tai chi, and yoga may improve physical function in osteoarthritis.

• In addition, tai chi may improve arthritis self-efficacy in knee osteoarthritis.

• As most of the included systematic reviews (SRs) had low quality, no firm recommendations can be made.

• Most of the included SRs did not evaluate the certainty in the evidence.

Keywords:

• Exercise
• mind-body
• physical activity
• osteoarthritis
• qigong
• tai chi
• yoga

Acknowledgements

Registration Doi: https://osf.io/wpqvr.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The author(s) reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.