Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2005 Reed Business Information Ltd. All Rights Reserved. Australian Doctor July 22, 2005 v00 i00 p8

by Bianca Nogrady

LANCET US researchers should be congratulated -- for their ability to obtain funding to conduct a randomised clinical trial on the power of prayer.

A group of 748 patients undergoing coronary revascularisation were randomised to "off-site prayer" by on-call congregations, or to receive a dose of music, imagery and touch therapy at their bedside.

Unfortunately, neither intervention had any effect on major adverse cardiovascular events, six-month mortality or re-admission rates, according to the paper published in the Lancet (16 July).

The study of "noetic interventions"-- defined as therapies with no tangible method of administration -- covered as many spiritual bases as possible. Researchers enrolled prayer groups from Christian, Jewish, Muslim and Buddhist congregations who were notified of their designated patient's clinical and personal background within 30 minutes of randomisation.

Furthermore, in the final year, the researchers decided to double the prayer dose by establishing a "two-tiered" prayer therapy.

"When a patient was assigned prayer therapy, the second-tier groups were not given information on the name, age or illness but were simply notified that a patient had been enrolled and asked to pray for the prayers of the primary-tier congregations," the authors wrote.

The music, imagery and touch therapy involved a practitioner "certified in Level 1 Healing Touch" visiting the patient's bedside before the procedure to apply healing touch hand positions while the patient listened to a choice of music through headphones and focused on relaxing imagery.

While this therapy also had no effect on outcomes, it did reduce patients' distress, although this may have related to the presence of a compassionate human rather than any mystical element of treatment, researchers said.

Lancet 2005; 366:211-17.

Men's Health, March 2005 v20 i2 p40
Faith. (prayer helps cardiac patients)(Brief Article)

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2005 Rodale Press, Inc.

^ Cardiac patients who pray have a greater sense of hope and control than those who don't, say researchers at the University of Michigan. This may be why those with faith have shorter hospital stays and fewer complications than their nonreligious peers.

Townsend Letter for Doctors and Patients, Feb-March 2005 i259-260 p52(1)
Acquired immunodeficiency syndrome and prayer. (Psychoneuroimmunoendocrinology Review and Commentary) Robert A. Anderson.

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2005 The Townsend Letter Group

In this double-blind controlled trial of distance healing in 40 patients with advanced AIDS, subjects were pair-matched for age, CD[4.sup.+] count and number of AIDS-defining illnesses and randomized to receive either 10 weeks of distance healing (DH) treatment or to a conventional-treatment-only control group. Subjects were told they had a 50/50 chance of being in the active treatment group and all received standard care, 85% of the 37 men and 3 women professed a belief in distance healing. DH treatment was performed by unpaid self-identified healers (mean of 17 years experience) representing many different healing and spiritual traditions located throughout the United States, and subjects and healers never met. Healers were randomly assigned to subjects one week at a time, to work at the DH one hour daily; they received a packet with only the first name, photo, CD[4.sup.+] count and current symptoms of each subject; each healer worked with five subjects, and turned in logs of completion of sessions.

At 6 months, a blinded medical chart review found that treatment subjects acquired 0.1 new AIDS-defining illnesses/patient vs. 0.6 in controls (2p=.04), had a mean Boston Health Illness Severity score of 0.8 vs. 2.65 for controls (2p=.03), had 0.15 hospitalizations/subject vs. 0.6 for controls (2p=.04), 0.5 days of hospitalization vs. 3.4 (2p=.04) and required 9.2 outpatient doctor visits/subject vs. 13.0 (2p=.01). Recoveries from AIDS defining illnesses (6 vs. 2) did not reach significance. Treated subjects also showed significantly improved mood vs. controls (Profile of Mood Score 26 vs. 14) (2p=.02). Although ending CD[4.sup.+] counts were 55.5 and 31.1 [[micro]l.sup.3], respectively, this did not reach statistical significance.

Sicher F et al. A randomized double-blind study of the effect of distant healing in a population with advanced AIDS. Report of a small scale study. West J Med 1998 Dec; 169(6):356-63

COMMENT: These data strongly support the possibility of a distance healing/prayer effect on these AIDS patients. Dr. Dan Benor has catalogued 131 published prayer studies, of which 56 showed positive results. Many of these studies were done with plants, microbiological organisms, animals and enzymes. This study was well controlled and blinded, with rather striking results. The mechanisms by which prayer might be explained are poorly understood. Drs. Roberto Assagioli and Carl Jung postulated a "collective unconscious." Dr. Larry Dossey has written of the "non-locality" of prayer. Dr. William Tiller speaks of the subtle energy field with energies vibrating in the gigahertz range and moving up to [10.sup.9] times the speed of light. I suspect that these postulations will lead to a coherent model of distance healing within the next decade.

Robert Anderson is a retired family physician whose practice career took a holistic turn as decades passed. He has authored five major books, Stress Power!, Wellness Medicine, The Complete Self-Care Guide to Holistic Medicine (co-author), Clinician's Guide to Holistic Medicine (McGraw Hill, 2001), and The Scientific Basis for Holistic Medicine, (6th edition 2004), available from American Health Press, holos@nwi.net. Anderson was the founding president of the American Board of Holistic Medicine, past president of the AHMA, former Assistant Clinical Professor of Family Medicine at the University of Washington and is currently an Adjunct Instructor in Family Medicine at Bastyr University.

Presbyterian Record, Dec 2003 v127 i11 p12(1)
Study concludes prayer has no effect on surgery. (Brief Article)

Full Text: COPYRIGHT 2003 Presbyterian Record

Prayer appears to have no effect on patients undergoing heart surgery, a new study has found. Researchers at Duke University Medical Center in North Carolina followed the progress of 750 patients, half of whom were prayed for by a team of Christians, Jews, Buddhists and Muslims. Those who were prayed for fared no better than those who were not, The Times of London reports.

England's Bishop of Durham, the Rt. Rey. Tom Wright, criticized the study. "Prayer is not a penny-in-the-slot machine," he told the newspaper. "This is like setting an exam for God to see if God will pass it or not."

Source: Globe and Mail

Psychosocial Factors in Outcomes of Heart Surgery : The Impact of Religious Involvement and Depressive Symptoms

Associations of stronger religious beliefs with fewer complications and shorter hospital LOSs accord with previous findings, extending them for the first time to indicators of surgical recovery. Longer hospital LOSs for patients reporting frequent religious attendance is also a novel finding and may reflect extrinsic religiosity. Stronger religion effects in women than in men, longer hospital LOSs among patients reporting high levels of depressive symptoms, and the impact of older age on both outcomes, argue for a multivariate approach to understanding adaptation to heart surgery. Limitations of this study include use of a convenience sample, less-than-comprehensive assessment of biomedical risk factors, and the ambiguities of correlational research. However, a prospective design and biomedical outcomes are important strengths. Additional research is needed to replicate and extend these findings, and to examine multiple mechanisms that may explain positive and negative associations between separable facets of religiousness and various health outcomes.