MR-spectroscopy in Post-covid Condition Prior to and Following a Yoga Breathing Intervention

From a clinical perspective, we find that many patients with Post COVID condition suffer from severe and debilitating shortness of breath, while routine pulmonary investigations fail to find the cause of the problems experienced. If dyspnea is associated with palpitations, dizziness or anxiety, patients are commonly diagnosed with "dysfunctional breathing". From a psychosomatic perspective, the symptom of dysfunctional breathing can be classified as a "functional symptom" under the umbrella term of somatic symptom disorder. Therefore, Yoga interventions with special emphasis on breath-guided relaxation are a promising approach. We aim to investigate the psycho-somatic and somato-psychic pathophysiology on a morphological, psychological, functional and biological basis underlying the symptom of dysfunctional breathing. Furthermore, we plan to investigate the mechanism of Yoga intervention on the mental and somatic symptom burden of participants with Post COVID condition. Then, we aim to compare the impact of Yoga on other groups - healthy individuals, patients with chronic obstructive lung disease (COPD), as well as those with somatic symptom disorder. As a control intervention to Yoga guided breathing exercises a social contact group will be used.

NCT Number	NCT05946512
Lead Sponsor	Medical University Innsbruck
Conditions	Post COVID-19 Condition, Somatic Symptom Disorder
Enrollment	320 participants
Start Date	2023-07-24
Primary Completion	2026-07-24 (estimated)
Study Completion	2027-01-01 (estimated)
Updated on ClinicalTrials.gov	2023-07-14