An HCP Live news report indicates that physical therapy and balneotherapy can improve sleep quality in patients with knee osteoarthritis.

“To our knowledge, this study is one of the largest and most rigorous trials of the efficacy of BT and PT on sleep,” the authors wrote. They posit that the heat and thermal effects of BT may increase the “extensibility of collagen-rich tissues,” thus improving patients’ range of motion, diminishing muscle plain, and relieving muscle spasms. “Furthermore, heat may increase secretion of cortisol and catecholamines by thermal stress, thus having an anti-inflammatory effect…without ignoring the possible contribution of the chemical substances, we suggest that the observed improvements in the clinical variables in this study were mainly due to the thermal effect.”

The researchers noted that even after treatment with anti-inflammatory medications, patients with OA show significantly greater incidence of sleep disturbance compared to age-matched control subjects. “Given the likely reciprocal effects between pain and SLD, distinguishing unique causal pathways is difficult. Chronic pain initiates and exacerbates SLD; disturbed sleep in turn maintains and exacerbates chronic pain and related dysfunction. The question is whether an intervention that improves sleep in individuals with disturbed sleep and comorbid pain state, such as OA, might reduce pain as well.”

The most significant limitations of the study are a lack of a control group and the possibility that the environment of BT and PT delivery contributed to a placebo-like effect.

Read the full story at www.hcplive.com