Physical Activity in Depressed Elderly. A Systematic Review

Abstract

Background:exercise may reduce depressive symptoms both in healthy aged populations and in old patients diagnosed with MDD, but few specific analysis were conducted on the efficacy of exercise as an adjunctive treatment with antidepressants, which may be probably more useful in clinical practice, considered the high prevalence of treatment resistant depression in late life, the low cost and safety of physical activity interventions. Objective: to establish the new findings on the effectiveness of exercise on depression in elderlies, with particular focus on the efficacy of the exercise as an adjunctive treatment with antidepressants drug therapy.Method:the search of significant articles was carried out in PubMed/Medline with the following key words: “exercise”, “physical activity”, “physical fitness”, “depressive disorder”, “depression”, “depressive symptoms”, “late life”, “old people”, and “elderly”. Results:44 papers were retrieved by the search. Among the 10 included randomized controlled trials, treatment allocation was adequately conceived in 4 studies, intention-to-treat analysis was performed in 6 studies, but no study had a double-blinded assessment. We examined and discussed the results of all these trials.Conclusion:in the last 20 years, few progresses were done in showing the efficacy of exercise on depression, due in part to the persistent lack of high quality research, in part to clinical issues of management of depression in late life, in part to the difficult to establish the real effectiveness of exercise on depressive symptoms in elderlies. However, there are some promising findings on physical activity combined with antidepressants in treatment resistant late life depression.

Effects of multi-domain interventions in (pre)frail elderly on frailty, functional, and cognitive status: a systematic review

“…The beneficial effects of an exercise intervention alone on frailty,62 muscle outcomes,63 physical functioning,17 quality of life,64 depression,65 and cognition66 have been described extensively. Although this review did not focus on single-domain interventions, it was observed that the exercise intervention on its own consistently contributed to the core effects on frailty, muscle mass, and muscle strength 33,44–46.…”

A study of wrist-worn activity measurement as a potential real-world biomarker for late-life depression

“…While ADL and QoL measures correlated well with physical activity, self-report measures of loneliness and social support did not, suggesting that other developing technologies may be more appropriate for investigating the link between these variables in LLD. Furthermore, since exercise has been proposed as a treatment for those with depression, including LLD (Bridle et al 2012; Cooney et al 2013; Mura & Carta, 2013), such devices may play a role in monitoring levels of activity when used therapeutically.…”

The Association Between Different Kinds of Exercise and Quality of Life in the Long Term. Results of a Randomized Controlled Trial on the Elderly

“…A recent review of the literature concluded that evidence from high-quality studies was generally positive, but that the effect on depression was minimal [7]. …”