Overview of the Publications from the Anthroposophic Medicine Outcomes Study (AMOS): A Whole System Evaluation Study

Abstract

Anthroposophic medicine is a physician-provided complementary therapy system that was founded by Rudolf Steiner and Ita Wegman. Anthroposophic therapy includes special medicinal products, artistic therapies, eurythmy movement exercises, and special physical therapies. The Anthroposophic Medicine Outcomes Study (AMOS) was a prospective observational multicenter study of 1631 outpatients starting anthroposophic therapy for anxiety disorders, asthma, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, depression, low back pain, migraine, and other chronic indications under routine conditions in Germany.AMOS incorporated two features proposed for the evaluation of integrative therapy systems: (1) a sequential approach, starting with the whole therapy system (use, safety, outcomes, perceived benefit), addressing comparative effectiveness and proceeding to the major system components (physician counseling, anthroposophic medicinal products, art therapy, eurythmy therapy, rhythmical massage therapy) and (2) a mix of different research methods to build an information synthesis, including pre-post analyses, prospective comparative analyses, economic analyses, and safety analyses of individual patient data. AMOS fostered two methodological innovations for the analysis of single-arm therapy studies (combined bias suppression, systematic outcome comparison with corresponding cohorts in other studies) and the first depression cost analysis worldwide comparing primary care patients treated for depression vs depressed patients treated for another disorder vs nondepressed patients.A total of 21 peer-reviewed publications from AMOS have resulted. This article provides an overview of the main research questions, methods, and findings from these publications: anthroposophic treatment was safe and was associated with clinically relevant improvements in symptoms and quality of life without cost increase; improvements were found in all age, diagnosis, and therapy modality groups and were retained at 48-month follow-up; nonrespondent bias, natural recovery, regression to the mean, and adjunctive therapies together could explain a maximum of 37% of the improvement.

Clinical Outcomes of Rhythmical Massage: A Prospective Cohort Study with Swiss Outpatients

“…(1) RM treatment during the 12 months before enrollment in the study (2) Age < 18 or > 75 (3) Infections with pathogens (4) Fever (5) Furuncles, eczema, and fungi (6) Burns and open wounds. RM was performed by three different RM therapists, who have certification from the School for Rhythmical Massage of the Ita Wegman Hospital (Arlesheim, Switzerland) or from the Swiss EMR (Erfahrungs Medizinisches Register).…”

“…6 This study focused on chronic diseases and revealed that use of AM-including, but not limited to, RM-was associated with symptom reduction and improvement of health-related quality of life (HRQoL) for the following indications: chronic depression 7 ; anxiety disorders 8 ; chronic low-back pain 9 ; attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) 10 ; migraine 11 ; and asthma. 12 When the data from the patients in the Anthroposophic Medicine Outcomes Study, who were treated with RM, were analyzed independently of their diagnoses, long-term reductions of symptoms and improvements in HRQoL were observed.…”

A General Pediatrics and Integrative Medicine Approach to Pervasive Refusal Syndrome: A Case Report

“…A Health-Technology Assessment Report and a 2011 update identified 265 clinical studies on the efficacy and effectiveness of anthroposophic medicine. [21][22][23] The integrative treatment approach with anthroposophic medicine seemed helpful in this case, but separating out how the specific therapies contributed to the overall progress is not feasible. Medications play a limited role in treatment of PRS.…”

Patient-centered outcomes on quality of life and anthroposophic healthcare: a qualitative triangulation study

“…The quality and quantity of the scientific underpinnings of AH are growing [15,[19][20][21][22][23]. Recently, in the Netherlands, patient experiences with AH were measured by means of a CQ-Index AH [24].…”