Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Muscle Disease (ACTMUS)
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Muscle Disease (ACTMUS)
IRAS ID
194191
Contact name
Michael Rose
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
King's College Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Duration of Study in the UK
2 years, 2 months, 31 days
Research summary
Muscle diseases (MD) are a group of primary disorders of the muscle itself which can be acquired or genetic and that mostly result in progressive muscle wasting and weakness causing difficulties with mobility and arm and hand functions. There are a number of specific muscle diseases which can be diagnosed on basis of several criteria including; the pattern of the muscle weakness, the pathology appearances of the muscle on a muscle biopsy and in some cases genetic testing. In adults muscle disease are usually chronic long-term conditions that do not have a definitive cure. Supportive care has reduced complications from muscle disease and improved survival in some cases but we would like to improve QoL also. We know that the QoL of those with MD is not just affected by the severity\nof their MD but that a variety of psychological variables also worsen QoL. Based upon our knowledge of these psychological variables we feel that a particular type of psychological intervention known as “acceptance and commitment therapy” (ACT) could potentially improve QoL in those with MD. We therefore propose to test whether ACT does in fact improve QoL in those with MD by randomising 154 patients to receiving either the ACT therapy or standard medical care and seeing if the QoL of those receiving the ACT treatment improves more that those not receiving this treatment. If this trial shows this psychological treatment to be beneficial we will then expect that it can be applied to all adults with muscle disease nationally. For this reason we have purposely designed the ACT treatment to be one that can be applied to the general MD population in the UK without the\nneed for specialist psychological support which is scarce in the NHS.
REC name
London - Camberwell St Giles Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
16/LO/0609
Date of REC Opinion
11 May 2016
REC opinion
Further Information Favourable Opinion