Yoga to Reduce Fatigue in Hospitalized Children Receiving Intensive Chemotherapy

November 27, 2015 updated by: Lillian Sung, The Hospital for Sick Children

A Feasibility Study of Yoga to Reduce Fatigue in Hospitalized Children Receiving Intensive Chemotherapy

Cancer-related fatigue (CRF) is a major problem in children, adolescents and adults receiving treatment for cancer, and intensively treated patients may be at higher risk. While exercise is an effective intervention for CRF, patients receiving the most intensive chemotherapy may frequently be too ill to participate in a standardized exercise program. A unique intervention that combines exercise and relaxation is yoga. This pilot study will evaluate the feasibility of three times weekly yoga sessions administered by a trained yoga instructor for a three week duration and will enroll between 10 and 20 children. If feasible, the intervention will be tested in a randomized controlled trial.

Study Overview

Status

Completed

Conditions

Intervention / Treatment

Study Type

Interventional

Enrollment (Actual)

11

Phase

  • Not Applicable

Contacts and Locations

This section provides the contact details for those conducting the study, and information on where this study is being conducted.

Study Locations

  • Canada
    • Ontario
      • Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5G 1X8
        • The Hospital for Sick Children

Participation Criteria

Researchers look for people who fit a certain description, called eligibility criteria. Some examples of these criteria are a person's general health condition or prior treatments.

Eligibility Criteria

Ages Eligible for Study

7 years to 18 years (Child, Adult)

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Genders Eligible for Study

All

Description

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Diagnosed with any acute myeloid leukemia (AML), relapsed acute lymphoblastic leukemia, stage 3 or 4 Burkitt's lymphoma/leukemia or about to receive autologous or allogeneic haematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT)
  • Expected to be an inpatient for at least three weeks after initiation of chemotherapy or conditioning
  • Ages 7 to 18 years of age at enrollment

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Features present to an extent that would preclude compliance with yoga (as assessed by the attending physician): a) motor disability, b) cognitive disability, c) cardiopulmonary symptoms, or d) known compression fracture resulting in disability
  • Parent or patient cannot understand English

Study Plan

This section provides details of the study plan, including how the study is designed and what the study is measuring.

How is the study designed?

Design Details

  • Primary Purpose: Treatment
  • Allocation: N/A
  • Interventional Model: Single Group Assignment
  • Masking: None (Open Label)

Arms and Interventions

Participant Group / Arm
Intervention / Treatment
Experimental: Individualized Yoga Intervention
Individualized Yoga Intervention sessions will be administered by a trained yoga instructor three times weekly (or up to a maximum of five times per week) for three consecutive weeks. There will be a common structure for all sessions that will include relaxation and breathing exercises as well as a series of poses focused on strengthening, flexibility, and balance. There will be low, moderate and high intensity regimens prescribed depending on the wishes and abilities of the child and parent and the judgment of the yoga instructor.
Behavioral: Individualized Yoga Intervention

What is the study measuring?

Primary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Feasibility of recruitment
Time Frame: baseline

To determine feasibility of a 3 times weekly, 3 week yoga intervention for hospitalized children receiving intensive chemotherapy ± radiation by determining the number of children who can complete at least 60% of scheduled yoga sessions for consenting individuals.

We will consider the ability to administer 60% of planned yoga sessions over a 3 week period as feasible (in other words, a minimum of 6 of 9 planned sessions) and anticipate that at least 70% of participants should be able to achieve this level of adherence.

We planned to enroll a minimum of 10 and a maximum of 20 patients and believe the final sample size (11 participants) provides sufficient information to know whether the intervention and measurements are appropriate.
baseline

Secondary Outcome Measures

Outcome Measure
Measure Description
Time Frame
Fatigue and Quality of Life outcomes
Time Frame: Change from baseline to day 7, 14 and 21
To describe changes over the intervention period according to: 1) Parent/guardian proxy-report fatigue using the FS-P (Fatigue Scale-Parent) and PedsQL MFM (PedsQL Multidimensional Fatigue Module) and child self-report fatigue using the FS-C/FS-A (Fatigue Scale-Child/Adolescent) and PedsQL MFM; 2) Child QoL using the PedsQL Acute Cancer Module; 3) Parent QoL using the SF-36 (Short Form 36); 4) Acceptability of the yoga intervention according to parents and children; 5) Qualitatively, any aspects of the intervention or measurement that can be improved. We have chosen to focus on a small number of key endpoints to preserve the feasibility of the pilot and future RCT as incorporation of a large number of endpoints would likely result in greater non-compliance in outcome ascertainment. The secondary analyses will all be descriptive. Variability and change in outcome measures in this study will be used to assess the sample size required in the design of a future efficacy trial.
Change from baseline to day 7, 14 and 21

Collaborators and Investigators

This is where you will find people and organizations involved with this study.

Sponsor

The Hospital for Sick Children

Publications and helpful links

The person responsible for entering information about the study voluntarily provides these publications. These may be about anything related to the study.

General Publications

Study record dates

These dates track the progress of study record and summary results submissions to ClinicalTrials.gov. Study records and reported results are reviewed by the National Library of Medicine (NLM) to make sure they meet specific quality control standards before being posted on the public website.

Study Major Dates

Study Start

January 1, 2013

Primary Completion (Actual)

October 1, 2013

Study Registration Dates

First Submitted

March 28, 2014

First Submitted That Met QC Criteria

April 2, 2014

First Posted (Estimate)

April 7, 2014

Study Record Updates

Last Update Posted (Estimate)

November 30, 2015

Last Update Submitted That Met QC Criteria

November 27, 2015

Last Verified

November 1, 2015

More Information

Terms related to this study

Keywords

Additional Relevant MeSH Terms

Other Study ID Numbers

  • Yoga Pilot

This information was retrieved directly from the website clinicaltrials.gov without any changes. If you have any requests to change, remove or update your study details, please contact register@clinicaltrials.gov. As soon as a change is implemented on clinicaltrials.gov, this will be updated automatically on our website as well.

Clinical Trials on Fatigue

Clinical Trials on Individualized Yoga Intervention

Search Similar Trials

Sponsors and Collaborators

Medical Conditions

Drug Interventions

CROs by country

CROs in Qatar

Conditions

Rare Diseases

Drug Interventions

Dietary Supplements

Sponsor/Collaborators

Locations

Subscribe