Acute post-exercise blood pressure responses to sprint interval exercise in humans: a systematic review and structured synthesis

Background: Post-exercise hypotension is an acute systemic recovery response that links exercise physiology with blood pressure control, yet the response to all-out sprint interval exercise is less clearly defined than responses to moderate-intensity continuous or submaximal interval exercise. Methods: Six databases were searched from inception to 1 February 2026. Controlled acute human studies were eligible when they examined a single bout of sprint interval exercise (SIE) or a closely equivalent all-out, repeated-sprint, Wingate-based or supramaximal interval protocol and reported post-exercise blood pressure. Two reviewers independently screened records, extracted data and assessed risk of bias. Study-level mean differences were organized by comparator family and assessment window. Because exact passive-control data were sparse, crossover-aware exploratory quantitative summaries were retained only as descriptive aids, using an assumed within-participant correlation of 0.50 with sensitivity analyses. Values available only as figure-digitized means without extractable dispersions were retained for descriptive synthesis only. Results: Nine randomized crossover studies involving 136 participants were included. The exact passive/no-exercise control evidence was small: three studies with 31 participants contributed systolic blood pressure (SBP) data and two studies with 21 participants contributed diastolic blood pressure (DBP) data at the first extractable exact time point beyond 60 min. Study-level SBP mean differences were -3.0, -5.0 and -8.0 mmHg, indicating a directionally consistent short-term systolic reduction after SIE. Study-level DBP mean differences were -3.0 and -7.0 mmHg, providing only sparse preliminary evidence for DBP. In protocol-comparator studies, all three 45-min peripheral SBP estimates favored longer over shorter recovery intervals (-7.0, -7.5 and -5.0 mmHg). Exploratory quantitative summaries are reported in the full text and figures as descriptive aids only. Evidence for 24-h ambulatory blood pressure was limited to one study and did not establish a durable sprint-specific effect beyond the acute recovery window. Conclusion: Single-bout sprint interval exercise may elicit short-term post-exercise reductions in SBP and possibly DBP, but the evidence remains constrained by very small crossover study samples, heterogeneous protocols, incomplete paired-data reporting and reliance on assumed within-participant correlations. The findings support sprint interval exercise as an acute cardiovascular physiology stimulus, but they are not clinically definitive and do not establish superiority over other exercise modes. Registration: PROSPERO CRD420261366067; registered after screening had begun and before final quantitative synthesis. Systematic Review Registration: https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/, identifier CRD420261366067.