Certain types of meditation may provide some modestrelief from anxiety, depression and pain, a new study found.

But the study found little evidence for other reported benefits of meditation, including help in curbing substance abuse, poor eating habits, sleep disorders and weight problems.

The report, published Monday in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine, reviewed the findings from 47 previous studies, all randomized clinical trials, with 3,515 adult participants in total.

Many people use meditation to ease stress and promote general health. The purpose of the report was to examine the accumulated evidence to help doctors determine how best to counsel patients on the possible benefits and limitations of meditation, said Madhav Goyal, assistant professor of general internal medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the report's lead researcher.

In each of the underlying studies, participants received professionalinstruction in one of two types of meditation: mantra meditation or mindfulness meditation. A popular form of mantra meditation is transcendental meditation, which involves repetition of a phrase 'in such a way that it transcends one to an effortless state where focused attention is absent,' the study said. By contrast, mindfulness meditation emphasizes training in 'present-focused awareness,' or mindfulness. The study noted that the distinctions between the meditation types aren't always clear.

Researchers found that only mindfulness meditation produced some benefits. For example, the improvement in patients with mild symptoms of depression was similar in magnitude to what might be expected from the use of an antidepressant, the study said. It also noted that there were few mantra-meditation studies to include in the JAMA review, which could help account for the lack of evidence of benefits from this type of meditation.