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Hindi Evidence on exercise prescription for additional Depression treatment: A meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials
*Corresponding Author:
Copyright: © 2020 . This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Abstract
Objectives: The present study aimed to clarify (1) the effect of ET as a monotherapy or complementary treatment of pharmacological therapy; and (2) changes in the dose-response for different exercise prescription characteristics.
Methods: We sought Randomized Controlled Trials (RCT) published in peer-reviewed journals between 2003-2019 in Scopus, Cochrane, Pubmed/Medline, ISI Web of Knowledge and APA PsycNET databases. We found 1,165 articles and selected 15 studies to this meta-analysis. RCTs with different ET and PT prescriptions were examined using the delta (pre and post-intervention) of a validated depression scale compared to the control group in different treatment conditions.
Results: Standardized mean differences and confidence intervals (SMD, 95% CI) were found for ET with or without PT group (-0.45, -0.62 to -0.29), ET and PT group (-0.70, -1.00 to -0.40), and only ET group (- 0.39, -0.57to -0.21). The subgroup analyses showed a moderate and large SMD in favour of resistance training (-0.67, -1.22to -0.12), aerobic exercise 60-80% of maximum heart rate intensity (-0.56, -0.89 to - 0.23), 20 to 30 minutes (-0.59,-0.88 to -0.31) or 45 to 60 minutes (-0.55, -0.81 to -0.29) duration per session, and seven times per week (-0.75,-1.30 to -0.20).
Conclusions: ET plus PT showed a better effect on reducing depressive symptoms, and the exercise prescription that shows the best dose-response in subgroup analyses can be the target for ET in depression.
