A new study suggests that cognitive behavioral therapy can help reduce insomnia among elderly patients with osteoarthritis.

CBT is a treatment approach that deals with feelings and behaviors. The method is based on the premise that individuals can change the way they think to themselves to help feel better, even if the situation does not change.

The results showed that treatment improved both immediate and long-term self-reported sleep and pain in elderly patients with insomnia associated with osteoarthritis and pain control directly.

Participants who received cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) reported significantly less time to sleep and reducing pain and increasing the efficiency of sleep.

These improvements persisted CBT-I in patients (19 of 23) were assessed for quality of sleep and the perception of pain in one year of follow-up visit.

According to lead author Michael V. Vitiello, PhD, Professor, University of Washington in Seattle, the results indicate that insomnia is not just a symptom of osteoarthritis, but rather a coexistence of the disease.

Vitiello said the improvement of sleep can result in an improvement of osteoarthritis, which is particularly important because, at least in older adults, insomnia rarely leaves itself-rather, that usually coexists with other diseases, conditions pain and depression.

“The particular strength of CBT-I is that once a person learns to improve their sleep, study after study has shown that improvement persisted for a year or more,” said Vitiello.

“What we and others are showing that CBT-I can not only improve sleep, but sleep improvements may lead to improved co-existence of medical or psychiatric illnesses such as arthritis or depression, and For our study, these additional benefits can be seen in the long term. ”

A total of 23 patients with a mean age of 69 years were randomly assigned to CBT-I, while 28 patients with a mean age of 66.5 years were assigned to a stress management and well control group. Participants in the control group reported no significant improvement in any measure.

I-CBT intervention consisted of eight weekly two-hour classes ranging in size from four to eight participants. All classes were conducted in an academic medical center in downtown Chicago and is distributed throughout the calendar year.

According to background information in the study, sleep quality is a major concern for people with osteoarthritis, with 60 percent of people who have the disease reporting pain during the night. Chronic pain initiates and exacerbates sleep disturbed sleep in turn, maintains and exacerbates chronic pain and dysfunction.

The results indicate that successful treatment of sleep disorders can improve quality of life of patients in this population. The authors recommend that CBT-I, which is directed specifically to sleep, will be included in behavioral interventions for the treatment of pain in osteoarthritis and possibly other chronic pain conditions as well.

Deep in the Kalahari Desert of Africa is the devil’s claw, a plant that may hold the key to the effectiveness of treatments for arthritis, tendinitis and other diseases that affect millions of people every year.

In the U.S., devil’s claw is removed in phase II clinical trials for the treatment of arthritis of the hip and knee. Other promising applications are not far behind.

But while demand for these compounds is the increase in profits, the supply of Devil’s Claw is declining, thanks to years of drought that have led to the extinction of the plant.

Scientists have successfully reproduced the active ingredients in devil’s claw. His technique can lead to the development of “bio-factories that could produce large quantities of rare plants and extracts quickly at little cost.

Milen I. Georgiev, a scientist who designs and teaches courses on environmental protection and schools in Bulgaria, said that for thousands of years, native populations in southern Africa have used devil’s claw as a remedy for many diseases including fever, diarrhea and blood diseases.

Today, there are dozens of medications and herbal products around the world are based on chemicals derived from the plant.

In particular, two studies suggest that chemicals – Irida harpagoside glycosides and harpagide – can have beneficial effects in the treatment of degenerative rheumatoid arthritis, osteoarthritis, tendonitis and other conditions, Georgiev said.

“In Germany, 57 pharmaceutical products based on devil’s claw, marketed by 46 different companies, have accumulated sales volume alone worth over $ 40 million,” said Georgiev.

Currently, over 25 percent of all prescription drugs used in industrialized countries are directly or indirectly derived from plants, many of which are rare and sometimes endangered.

Hairy root, plant diseases caused by the soil bacterium Agrobacterium rhizogenes, is at the core of a promising new technique that could one day “biofactories” producing medicinal products derived from rare plants in large quantities at a low cost.

Georgiev notes that hairy roots are a big improvement over traditional, based on greenhouse crop. Georgiev and equipment are the first to induce hairy root culture of devil’s claw.

They took the plant and roots infected with the soil bacterium A. rhizogenes – a natural genetic engineer – to create a system of hairy roots of the plant to produce key chemicals for drugs, according to a dispatch from the American Chemical Society (ACS).