Background:

Older adults with multimorbidity experience impaired health-related quality of life and treatment burden. Yoga has the potential to improve several aspects of health and well-being. The British Wheel of Yoga’s Gentle Years Yoga© programme was developed specifically for older adults, including those with chronic conditions. A pilot trial demonstrated feasibility of using Gentle Years Yoga in this population, but there was limited evidence of its effectiveness and cost-effectiveness.

Objective:

To determine the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of the Gentle Years Yoga programme in addition to usual care versus usual care alone in older adults with multimorbidity.

Design:

Pragmatic, multisite, individually randomised controlled trial with embedded economic and process evaluations.

Setting:

Participants were recruited from 15 general practices in England and Wales from July 2019 with final follow-up in October 2022.

Participants:

Community-dwelling adults aged 65 years and over with multimorbidity, defined as two or more chronic health conditions from a predefined list.

Interventions:

All participants continued with any usual care provided by primary, secondary, community and social services. The intervention group was offered a 12-week programme of Gentle Years Yoga.

Main outcome measures:

The primary outcome and end point were health-related quality of life measured using the EuroQol-5 Dimensions, five-level version utility index score over 12 months. Secondary outcomes were health-related quality of life, depression, anxiety, loneliness, incidence of falls, adverse events and healthcare resource use.

Results:

The mean age of the 454 randomised participants was 73.5 years; 60.6% were female, and participants had a median of three chronic conditions. The primary analysis included 422 participants (intervention, n = 227 of 240, 94.6%; usual care, n = 195 of 214, 91.1%). There was no statistically or clinically significant difference in the EuroQol-5 Dimensions, five-level version utility index score over 12 months: the predicted mean score for the intervention group was 0.729 (95% confidence interval 0.712 to 0.747) and for usual care it was 0.710 [95% confidence interval (CI) 0.691 to 0.729], with an adjusted mean difference of 0.020 favouring intervention (95% CI −0.006 to 0.045, p = 0.14). No statistically significant differences were observed in secondary outcomes, except for the pain items of the Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System-29. No serious, related adverse events were reported. The intervention cost £80.85 more per participant (95% CI £76.73 to £84.97) than usual care, generated an additional 0.0178 quality-adjusted life-years per participant (95% CI 0.0175 to 0.0180) and had a 79% probability of being cost-effective at the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence threshold of £20,000 per quality-adjusted life-year gained. The intervention was acceptable to participants, with seven courses delivered face to face and 12 online.

Limitations:

Self-reported outcome data raise the potential for bias in an unblinded trial. The COVID-19 pandemic affected recruitment, follow-up and the mode of intervention delivery.

Conclusions:

Although the Gentle Years Yoga programme was not associated with any statistically significant benefits in terms of health-related quality of life, mental health, loneliness or falls, the intervention was safe, acceptable to most participants and highly valued by some. The economic evaluation suggests that the intervention could be cost-effective.

Future work:

Longer-term cost-effectiveness modelling and identifying subgroups of people who are most likely to benefit from this type of intervention.

Trial registration:

This trial is registered as ISRCTN13567538.

Funding:

This award was funded by the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) Health Technology Assessment programme (NIHR award ref: 17/94/36) and is published in full in Health Technology Assessment; Vol. 28, No. 53. See the NIHR Funding and Awards website for further award information.

Article history

The research reported in this issue of the journal was funded by the HTA programme as award number 17/94/36. The contractual start date was in January 2019. The draft manuscript began editorial review in January 2023 and was accepted for publication in August 2023. The authors have been wholly responsible for all data collection, analysis and interpretation, and for writing up their work. The HTA editors and publisher have tried to ensure the accuracy of the authors’ manuscript and would like to thank the reviewers for their constructive comments on the draft document. However, they do not accept liability for damages or losses arising from material published in this article.