The development and rollout of a randomized control trial evaluating the impact of a 12-week mind-body wellness intervention in patients with primary biliary cholangitis (PBC)

Persons with primary biliary cholangitis (PBC) experience significantly higher rates of fatigue, stress, anxiety, depression, and impaired health related quality of life (HRQOL) as compared to the general population. Online wellness programming ranging from physical activity to mindfulness interventions has been shown to be effective in decreasing fatigue and improving mental wellness in a variety of chronic disease populations. To date, no large-scale studies have been conducted to discern whether programming of this nature impacts measures of wellbeing in PBC, and it remains unclear how much support persons with PBC need to optimize their adherence to programming. Building upon a 12-week, online, mind-body wellness program that our team previously co-developed with the Canadian PBC Society and launched as a feasibility and acceptability trial to a group of 30 individuals with PBC, Makayla Watt’s project for the second year of her Masters will be to carry out a 3-arm randomized controlled trial with two intervention arms at varying levels of personnel support as compared to a control arm. At the end of the Makayla’s project, the PBC Society members will have access to the online resource (at no cost).

Faculty Supervisor:

Puneeta Tandon

Student:

Partner:

Canadian PBC Society

Discipline:

Life Sciences

Sector:

Health and Related Sciences & Technology

University:

University of Alberta

Program: