Hypnotizability and immunological response to psychological intervention in HIV

American Journal of Clinical Hypnosis, Apr 2005

Laidlaw, T. M., Kerstein, R., Bennett, B. M., Naito, A., Dwivedi, P., & Gruzelier, J. (2004). Hypnotizability and immunological response to psychological intervention in HIV. Contemporary Hypnosis, 21(3), 126-135. This pilot study related hypnotizability to changes in HIV immune blood markers after two psychological interventions.

The mean of two blood assays prior to intervention was compared to the results of the blood assay after the intervention. A course of four weekly 2-hour training sessions coupled with daily self-hypnosis practice was given to 13 participants with diagnosed HIV and for a further 9 participants a similar course was given in a Japanese healing method called Johrei (a total of 22 participants). All were naive to anti-retroviral medication. The outcome measures were CD4 T cell counts, and viral load of the HIV virus in blood. When highly hypnotizable subjects were compared to those of lower hypnotizability in a repeated measures analysis, their CD4 t-lymphocyte counts were significantly higher (p = 0.007). This was achieved by the highly hypnotizable subjects non-significantly raising their CD4 counts while the CD4 counts of the less hypnotizable subjects declined significantly (mean change = -79.4, p - 0.006). The differences in CD4 T cell % of lymphocytes and the viral loads did not differ. This pilot study indicates that hypnotizability may predict immunological response to nsvcholoeical interventions in HIV