Influence of aerobic exercise on depression in young people: a meta-analysis

To investigate the influence of aerobic exercise on depression among the young people.

PubMed, Web of science, Embase, Cochrane, EBSCO were searched from inception to November 2023.

RCT studies, assessing the use of aerobic exercise in young people aged 6-35 years and then determining the development of depression in young people (aged 6-35 years), were selected, and mean ± SD values adjusted for the presence of baseline depression were extracted.

Study quality was assessed using the Review manager 5.4.1 and Cochrane 5.1 item on risk of bias and precision of observational studies. Two reviewers conducted all review stages independently. Selected data were pooled using random-effects meta-analysis.

The included studies evaluated the relationship between aerobic exercise and depression at various time points among young individuals, and provided corresponding mean ± SD values. Depression diagnosis in the selected studies was conducted using the Depression Correlation Scale.

After screening 2296 articles, 163 articles were selected for full-text review, and 8 of those were further reviewed. Ultimately, 12 studies, involving 658 individuals, were included in the meta-analysis. The results of the meta-analysis indicated that aerobic exercise could effectively improve depression in young people (d = -1.33, 95%CI: -1.78 ~ -0.87, P < 0.05). Subgroup analysis demonstrated that aerobic exercise was beneficial for both depression (d = -2.68, 95%CI: -3.87 ~ -1.48, P < 0.05) and non-depression (d = -0.85, 95%CI: -1.20 ~ -0.51, P < 0.05) conditions, as well as for low intensity (d = -0.93, 95%CI: -1.29 ~ 0.58, P < 0.05) and moderate intensity (d = -2.08,95%CI:-2.88 ~ -1.27, P < 0.05) exercises. Additionally, aerobic exercise was found to significantly alleviate depression in young people when performed for 40 min or less (d = -2.00,95%CI: -2.96 ~ -1.04, P < 0.05), whereas durations exceeding 40 min showed a lesser effect (d = -0.85,95%CI:-1.47 ~ -0.24, P < 0.05). Furthermore, the duration-based analysis revealed that aerobic exercise improved depression levels in young people regardless of duration, whether it was for less than 6 weeks (d = -1.27,95%CI: 2.12 ~ 0.14, P < 0.05), 6 to 11 weeks (d = 1.55, 95% CI: 2.16 ~ 0.94, P < 0.05), or more than 12 weeks (d = 1.00, 95% CI: -1.76 ~ -0.24,P < 0.05). Overall, these findings suggest that aerobic exercise is a promising intervention for alleviating depression in young individuals.

Both short (less than 40 min) and long (more than 40 min) periods of aerobic exercise were effective in improving depressive symptoms. However, the optimal duration of aerobic exercise may vary depending on the specific population and individual factors studied, such as age, health status, and exercise tolerance. Therefore, this study concluded that the most effective exercise regimen, 40 min of moderate-intensity aerobic exercise three times a week for 6 to 11 weeks, showed more significant improvement in depression indicators in individuals with depressive symptoms.