Photo by Andrew Shurtleff

Ann Gill Taylor, Center director (front), and (left to right) Sherry Fox and Debra Lyon, assistant professors of nursing, Kim Innes and Terry Selfe, postdoctoral trainees, and Ada Jacox, consultant, meet to develop future research projects for the Center.

April 30, 2004 -- Do you think of far-out folk remedies when the terms ”alternative medicine” or “complementary therapy” come up? Think again, because the University of Virginia’s Center for the Study of Complementary and Alternative
Therapies (CSCAT) is an elite research center. It has a dual role in both conducting research and training physicians, nurses and other health professionals to design and conduct rigorous clinical research to evaluate complementary interventions. With funding from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, NIH, and other agencies including private foundations, Dr. Ann Gill Taylor, director, and her colleagues Drs. Cheryl Bourguignon and Debra Lyon, in collaboration with other U.Va. researchers and scientists, are currently training five post-doctoral and nine predoctoral fellows in clinical research. These trainees receive a thorough grounding in statistical methods, clinical trials methodology and grant proposal development. They are also enouraged to attend seminars in Health Evaluation Sciences and in the University’s Multidisciplinary Training Program in Clinical Investigation, as well as the General Clinical Research Center’s annual Research Day.

The Center’s faculty strive to keep an appropriate balance between addressing the research training needs of the pre- and post-doctoral fellows and the pursuit of scientific research. Research in the Center encompasses a number of complementary practices and products ranging from energy therapies and mind-body interventions to biologically based products. Faculty-directed studies currently under way include randomized controlled clinical investigations of the effects of microcurrent cranial stimulation for the management of pain, anxiety and sleep disturbances, and the reduction of inflammatory cytokines in patients with breast cancer undergoing chemotherapy; evaluation of a low voltage microcurrent device to reduce pain and edema in high and low ankle injuries in athletes; static magnetic wrist splints in reducing symptoms and improving nerve conduction in persons with carpal tunnel syndrome; and massage to manage pain and anxiety in patients who have undergone abdominal surgery for cancer. Massage is also the intervention planned for a collaborative study for autologous stem cell recipients who may be suffering from leukemia or lymphoma. According to Dr. Taylor, the massage may be the single most pleasant intervention that patients experience in an otherwise onerous, yet often life-saving course of treatment. She adds: “The use of massage is strongly linked to the patient’s sense of well-being and perhaps to an improved quality of life while undergoing this intensive therapy.”

Dr. Bourguignon notes that studying the effects of complementary therapies in reducing the symptoms and inflammation in chronic diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis is important because conventional medications do not completely alleviate patients’ symptoms. The addition of complementary therapies to conventional medical regimes often reduces symptoms and enhances patient comfort, permitting a better quality of life, even when a cure for the underlying illness is not yet possible.

The use of randomized double-blind controlled studies using placebos or sham devices enables the researchers to draw conclusions about the efficacy of complementary therapies. The same measures used in evaluating conventional treatments are also used by researchers in the Center. Objective physiologic measurements, such as inflammatory cytokines, oxidative stress measures, and heart rate variability, are included in studies in addition to the subjective responses of study participants concerning symptom relief. The goal is to conduct well-designed studies that are as rigorous as any clinical trial of conventional therapies.

The environment within the Center greatly facilitates the training of the pre- and postdoctoral fellows given its multidisciplinary collaborations among faculty from nursing, medicine, biomedical engineering, sports medicine, exercise physiology and health evaluation sciences. These faculty members foster a supportive mentoring environment for fellows through their availability for questions, guidance and provision of a multitude of research experiences. Because of this supportive environment, Center trainees are productive in designing and conducting research as well as disseminating their findings. Current Center trainees are conducting studies of dietary supplements such as valerian root and antioxidants; mind-body interventions such as imagery; and body-based modalities such as qigong and yoga. Speaking with enthusiasm about the Center’s training program and research projects, Dr. Taylor concluded with, “Our goal is to become the flagship in both the conduct of CAM-related research and in the training of independent clinical researchers interested in testing the effects of complementary practices and products. Health care recipients are eager to know whether these interventions work or not.”