Randomised controlled trial of qigong in the treatment of mild essential hypertension.

Exercise and relaxation decrease blood pressure. Qigong is a traditional Chinese exercise consisting of breathing and gentle movements. We conducted a randomised controlled trial to study the effect of Guolin qigong on blood pressure. In all, 88 patients with mild essential hypertension were recruited from the community and randomised to Goulin qigong or conventional exercise for 16 weeks. The main outcome measurements were blood pressure, health status (SF-36 scores), Beck Anxiety and Depression Inventory scores. In the qigong group, blood pressure decreased significantly from 146.3+/-7.8/93.0+/-4.1 mmHg at baseline to 135.5+/-10.0/87.1+/-7.7 mmHg at week 16. In the exercise group, blood pressure also decreased significantly from 140.9+/-10.9/93.1+/-3.5 mmHg to 129.7+/-11.1/86.0+/-7.0 mmHg. Heart rate, weight, BMI, waist circumference, total cholesterol, renin and 24 h urinary albumin excretion significantly decreased in both groups after 16 weeks. General health, bodily pain, social functioning and depression also improved in both groups. No significant differences between qigong and conventional exercise were found. In conclusion, Guolin qigong and conventional exercise have similar effects on blood pressure in patients with mild hypertension. While no additional benefits were identified, it is nevertheless an alternative to conventional exercise in the nondrug treatment of hypertension.

Size at birth and neonatal and postneonatal mortality.

UNLABELLED: Birthweight is a crude indicator of size at birth. Some neonatologists and obstetricians have advocated the use of ponderal index and birthlength to characterize size at birth. This paper examines the associations between various size-at-birth indicators and neonatal and postneonatal mortality, with an emphasis on ponderal index and birthlength. Size at birth, gestational age and mortality data for about one million babies born alive in Sweden between 1987 and 1995 were collected from the Swedish Medical Birth Registry. A multinomial logit regression was used to estimate conditional odds ratios. Birthlength and ponderal index were independently associated with neonatal and postneonatal mortality. In the latter period, ponderal index was only weakly associated with mortality. The associations were not sensitive to exclusion of cases of congenital anomalies and adjustment for gestational age. CONCLUSION: Birthlength is strongly associated with both neonatal and postneonatal mortality; ponderal index is strongly associated with neonatal, but weakly with postneonatal mortality. The findings are consistent with previous hypotheses about a transient effect of ponderal index and a persistent effect of birthlength.