The effect of practicing yoga for the management of type II Diabetes was assessed in thissystematic review through searching related electronic databases and the grey literature to theend of May 2007 using Ovid. All randomized controlled clinical trials (RCTs) comparing yogapractice with other type of intervention or with regular practice or both, were includedregardless of language or type of publication. Each study was assessed for quality by twoindependent reviewers. Mean difference was used for summarizing the effect of each studyoutcomes with 95% confidence intervals. Pooling of the studies did not take place due to thewide clinical variation between the studies. Publication bias was assessed by statistical methods.Five trials with 363 participants met the inclusion criteria with medium to high risk of bias anddifferent intervention characteristics. The studies’ results show improvement in outcomesamong patients with diabetes type II. These improvements were mainly among short term orimmediate diabetes outcomes and not all were statistically significant. The results wereinconclusive and not significant for the long-term outcomes. No adverse effects were reportedin any of the included studies. Short-term benefits for patients with diabetes may be achievedfrom practicing yoga. Further research is needed in this area. Factors like quality of the trialsand other methodological issues should be improved by large randomized control trials withallocation concealment to assess the effectiveness of yoga on diabetes type II. A definitiverecommendation for physicians to encourage their patients to practice yoga cannot be reachedat present. Keywords: adult – systematic review – type II diabetes – yoga