AIDS, HIV Infections
Conditions
Keywords
AIDS, HIV, Prayer, Healing, Complementary Therapies
Brief summary
The purpose of this study is to determine whether individuals praying at a distance (also known as Distant Healing) can positively affect the health of people with HIV/AIDS.
Detailed description
Significant numbers of people with HIV/AIDS seek spiritual or psychic treatment. Distant healing could potentially be of benefit to large numbers of HIV/AIDS patients, as it is widely available and requires no travel or other activity on the part of the patient. However, the treatment can be costly and has not yet been proven effective in a controlled clinical trial. This study will evaluate the efficacy of distant healing in patients with HIV/AIDS. Participants in this study will be randomly assigned to either the distant healing group or a control group. All participants will have hour-long study visits at entry and Months 6 and 12. At study visits, participants will complete a demographic questionnaire, self-report health and symptom inventory, quality of life assessment, and profile of mood states. Blood will be drawn at each study visit.
Interventions
BEHAVIORALNon-local/distant healing or prayer
Sponsors
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH)
Study design
Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Intervention model
PARALLEL
Primary purpose
TREATMENT
Masking
DOUBLE
Eligibility
Sex/Gender
ALL
Age
18 Years to 65 Years
Healthy volunteers
No
Inclusion criteria
* HIV infection * History of a CD4 cell count less than 200 cells/mm3 * Stable antiretroviral regimen * English-speaking
Exclusion criteria
* Inability or unwillingness to fill out questionnaires * History of non-HIV related life-threatening disease
Countries
United States
Outcome results
None listed