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The authors used the meta-analytic approach to examine the effects of aerobic exercise on lipids and lipoproteins in adults 50 years of age and older. Twenty-eight outcomes representing 1427 subjects (806 exercise, 621 control) were available for pooling. Random-effects modeling yielded statistically significant improvements of 1.1%, 5.6%, 2.5%, and 7.1%, respectively, for total cholesterol (mean +/- SEM in mg/dL, -3.3+/-1.7; 95% confidence interval CI, -6.5 to -0.02; p=0.05), high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (2.5+/-1.0; 95% CI, 0.7-4.4; p=0.01), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (-3.9+/-1.9; 95% CI, -7.7 to -0.08; p=0.05), ratio of total cholesterol to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (-0.8+/-0.2; 95% CI, -1.2 to -0.4; p<0.001), but not triglycerides (-7.0+/-3.6; 95% CI, -14.0 to 0.1; p=0.06). After conducting sensitivity analyses, only the improvements in high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and the ratio of total cholesterol to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol remained statistically significant (p<0.05 for both). It was concluded that aerobic exercise increases high-density lipoprotein cholesterol and decreases the ratio of total cholesterol to high-density lipoprotein cholesterol in older adults.
Kelley et al. (2005) studied this question.