Depression is a coThis study utilized 348 full-text articles and their data. Countries included the United States, Australia, Japan, India, Ghana, Mexico, and Russia. Results showed that the biggest benefits in participants depression were when moving from no physical activity to some physical activity, rather than from low exercise to high levels of exercise. Just 2.5 hours a week of brisk walking was related to 25% lower risk for depression.
This relationship is thought to be due to a few different mechanisms, including inflammatory responses to activity and long-term changes to the brain. Additionally, it has been suggested that it may be related to self-esteem and body image, which can help social interactions and coping skills.
Despite the benefits of this study, it also has its limitations. While meta-analysis is a great way of collecting a large amount of data from diverse sources, the measures were somewhat different for many of the studies, including type or level of physical activity and time for follow up. This makes the study lack some consistency. Additionally, this research could not rule out the possibility that depression affects physical activity, rather than vice versa.
mmon and often debilitating mental illness that can lead to a myriad of negative outcomes, including isolation and even suicide. There are many factors that can influence an individual developing depression. Additionally, there are many different interventions that have been found to be effective in treating or preventing depression. There has been past research that suggests that physical activity can be a preventative measure for depressive symptoms.
Matthew Pearce and colleagues conducted a meta-analysis to study the association between physical exercise and depression. The samples used were adults who reported an element of physical activity and risk factors for depression. Studies were pulled from multiple online sources. Data was extracted from the studies, including volume of physical activity, depression cases, participant number, and follow-up.
Depression is the leading cause of mental health–related disease burden and a major cause of disability worldwide, affecting approximately 280 million people and accounting for more than 47 million disability-adjusted life-years in 2019.1 Depression is also associated with premature mortality from other illnesses2 and suicide.3
Prevention of depression requires effective interventions, including modification of established risk factors.4 Narrative reviews have concluded that physical activity can prevent future depression.5,6 One meta-analysis of prospective studies reported that compared with people with low levels of physical activity, those with higher levels had 17% (95% CI, 12%-21%) lower odds of developing depression,7 while another meta-analysis reported 21% (95% CI, 18%-25%) lower odds when synthesizing 106 associations from 65 studies using diverse exposure definitions.8 To our knowledge, no study has yet synthesized the evidence to describe the strength or shape of the association by conducting a dose-response meta-analysis using harmonized exposure estimates.
Estimating the dose-response relationship between physical activity and any health outcome using meta-analysis is challenging because of the diversity of assessment and inconsistent reporting. Most often, the harmonization of different estimates of physical activity exposure is achieved using binary categorization of low vs high activity, but this approach results in loss of information and does not tell us about the variation in risk across a range of physical activity doses. In contrast, previous work has shown that by using more detailed exposure harmonization, it is possible to investigate the shape of the association between physical activity and type 2 diabetes using dose-response meta-analytical techniques.9 Examining the association between the dose of physical activity and depression in this way allows approximation of the reduction in risk associated with different levels of activity. By combining estimates of reduction in risk with population prevalence estimates of activity, it is possible to quantify the population burden of depression related to insufficient physical activity and the potential public health impact of activity-related interventions.
The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to investigate the dose-response association between physical activity and depression. We also assessed the potential population changes in depression that may be preventable by higher physical activity levels.
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