Peripheral Temperature Autoregulation and its Effect on the Symptoms of Rheumatoid Arthritis

Abstract

Abstract Thermal therapies for Rheumatoid Arthritis (RA) usually require significant preparation and apparatus and some patients appear unable to manage the effort outside the clinical setting. The present study explored an alternative to externally applied heat and cold in the form of temperature autoregulation. Recent research on biofeedback assisted peripheral temperature regulation with osteoarthritis patients indicated that thermal control of the skin surface may have potential as an alternative approach to the treatment of RA symptoms, in particular, joint pain and joint stiffness. Twelve medical diagnosed Stage II rheumatoid arthritics were randomly allocated to two groups and trained to either increase or decrease the skin surface temperature over a self-selected painful hand joint. A further six subjects formed a “wait list” control group. The results were encouraging in that only the thermal feedback training groups reported significant changes in skin surface temperature, joint pain, joint stif...