Physical activity interventions appear to exert beneficial clinical effects on depressive symptoms in the elderly, with promising findings for exercise combined with antidepressants in treatment-resistant late-life depression.
Systematic Review
Does physical activity reduce depressive symptoms in elderly patients with depression?
Physical activity interventions appear to exert beneficial clinical effects on depressive symptoms in the elderly, though high-quality evidence remains limited.
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.
Mura et al. (2013) conducted a systematic review in Depression. Physical activity / Exercise vs. Standard treatments (including antidepressants), no treatment, or placebo-control was evaluated on Reduction in depressive symptoms. Physical activity interventions appear to exert beneficial clinical effects on depressive symptoms in the elderly, with promising findings for exercise combined with antidepressants in treatment-resistant late-life depression.