Abstract Objectives The purpose of this review was to analyze the effect of exercise training on cardiorespiratory fitness in children and adolescents with overweight or obesity. Methods MEDLINE via PubMed, Embase, SPORTDiscus, and the Cochrane library were searched and screened from inception to 15 October 2024 for randomized controlled trials. Only randomized controlled trials (RCTs) that examined the effect of exercise on subjects who were either obese or overweight (body mass index BMI ≥ 85th) and aged from 9 to 19 years old were included. Results The meta-analysis included 17 studies (24 trials) with 511 participants. Physical activity was found to significantly improve cardiorespiratory fitness (CRF; SMD = 0.92, 95 % CI 0.52,1.31, p < 0.001). Subgroup analysis showed that aerobic training (AT; SMD = 0.66, 95 % CI 0.34, 0.98, p < 0.01), combine training（CT; SMD = 0.64, 95 % CI 0.13, 1.16), and high intensity interval training (HIIT; SMD = 0.88, 95 % CI 0.45, 1.30, p < 0.01) were found to effectively improve CRF, but not resistance training (RT; SMD = 0.42, 95 % CI -0.93, 1.76, p < 0.01). Conclusions Physical activity can effectively improve CRF in children and adolescents with overweight or obesity. Moreover, subgroup analyses also revealed variability in the effects of different types of exercise interventions, with AT, CT and HIIT interventions effective in improving CRF but not RT interventions.
Cao et al. (Thu,) studied this question.