A Literature Review Of Complimentary Therapies With Arthritis

A Literature Review of Complimentary Therapies with Arthritis Elizabeth Kyle, David Lee, Jethro De Vera Loma Linda University School of Nursing NRSG 429 Nursing Reseasrch Eileen Fry-Bowers June 8, 2015 Introduction Arthritis is a disease process that many people are affected by today. It is defined as, â€Å"painful inflammation and stiffness of the joints†. Within arthritis, there are two different types of this inflammatory disease; osteoarthritis, which is the result of, bones rubbing together due to loss of synovial fluid and rheumatoid arthritis which is caused by an autoimmune disease process. There are many different treatment options available from over the counter medication to powerful prescription medication.†¦show more content†¦Over all , the trend that we noticed was that most patients preferred cold therapy over heat therapy, but in most cases, when both aspects were utilized, they yielded a better result. Research Because pain is the main issue that we are looking at absolving, we wanted to look at how patients reacted to pain. Yvonne C. Lee et al. looked at pain sensitivity and pain reactivity in osteoarthritis. The purpose of the study was to assess the experimental pain sensitivity and compare the inflammatory response to pain in 26 OA patients and 33 age-and sex-matched controls from the general population. The methods consisted of participants undergoing psychophysical pain testing to assess pain sensitivity in response to heat, cold and mechanical stimuli. â€Å"Blood samples were taken at baseline and four time points after testing to determine the effect of acute pain on C-reactive protein (CRP), interleukin 6, interleukin-1beta and tumor necrosis factor-alpha.† (Lee et al., 2011) They found that patients with osteoarthritis had lower pressure pain thresholds (P ≠¤ 0.003) and higher heat pain ratings (P ≠¤ 0.04) than controls across multiple body sites. Patients had higher CRP levels than the controls (P = 0.007). â€Å"CRP levels did not change in response to pain testing. Although not statistically significant, patients tended to have higher interleukin