MEDITAGING-Luxembourg: A Study Protocol of an RCT verifying the MBSR Effects on Older Portuguese-speaking Migrants

Introduction/aims
In Luxembourg, migration has a strong relationship with aging, since the first-generation immigrants who came to the country in the 1960s/70s are older adults nowadays, 32% of which are Portuguese. Most of these individuals are at higher risk of cognitive impairment and stress, due to on average lower educational and life-time occupational levels. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to validate interventions that promote healthy aging in this population. One of the fields that has been explored lately is mindfulness, especially the mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program. Previous studies have shown its positive impact on cognition and stress. However, only few studies verified its effects in older adults, especially with vulnerable populations. The MEDITAGING aims to investigate feasibility of the MBSR and its effects in old-Portuguese-speaking adults living in Luxembourg in comparison to a health promotion program.

Methods
MEDITAGING is a two-arm randomized-double blinded-controlled study, including 90 adults aged fifty-five and older. The MBSR will be conducted in groups during eight weeks, incorporating the traditional curriculum of weekly meetings with mindfulness activities and extra home practice. The active control condition will have the same structure but will include contents of health promotion. Neuropsychological assessments and qualitative interviews will be conducted at baseline, immediately after and one-month post-intervention. We will also do pre-post salivary cortisol and heart rate variability analyses, as surrogate measures to assess stress levels.
Results
The MEDITAGING is in the recruitment phase and sixty-five participants were already recruited in the local community and there are 43 participants that have finished the protocol. We have not started the data analysis phase yet but, based on the feedback of the participants during the interviews, the programs are feasible to execute in this population. The main subjective effects pointed by both MBSR and control group participants are related to increased social connection with other participants, stress relief, as well as improvement in sleep quality and nutrition.
Conclusion
The program showed to be feasible and have positive subjective impact in older migrant participants. The methodology and preliminary results will be discussed in the event. We speculate that the MBSR group will present larger gains in attention and stress relief.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Luxembourg National Research Fund (FNR) - Project Reference 15240063.