Abstract
Traditional Chinese exercise (TCE) has many uses in the prevention and treatment of chronic diseases. However, there is no consensus regarding the benefit of TCE for chronic diseases. Our objective is to examine the effect of TCE on the quality of life and depression for chronic diseases by performing a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials (RCTs). We only cover published RCTs. The outcome measures included quality of life and depression. Sixty articles with a total of 4311 patients were included. The pooling revealed that TCE could improve the SF-36 physical function subscale in the short term [SMD (95% CI) = 0.35 (0.13, 0.56), P = 0.002] and mid-term [SMD (95% CI) = 0.49 (0.12, 0.85), P = 0.009], GHQ [SMD (95% CI) = −0.68 (−1.26, −0.09), P = 0.02], the Center for Epidemiologic Studies depression scale in the short term [SMD (95% CI) = −0.86 (−1.42, −0.31), P = 0.002] and mid-term [SMD (95% CI) = −0.41 (−0.64, −0.18), P < 0.001]. The meta-analysis of RCT demonstrates that TCE can significantly improve the quality of life and depression of patients with chronic diseases. These findings provide useful information for patients with chronic diseases as well as for medical staff.
Highlights
A total of 23 articles (38.33%) blinded the outcome assessors to the treatment allocation
We found no publication bias, we did not search for any unpublished trials
TCE may contribute to improving the quality of life (e.g., SF-36 and GHQ) and reducing depression (e.g., CESD, SDS, BDI) in patients with chronic diseases
Summary
The meta-analysis was performed and reported in accordance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines. The protocol was registered prior to conducting the review. We searched for relevant studies that were published between January 1957 and January 2015 from several electronic data sources, including PubMed, EMBASE, Web of Science, the Cochrane Library, EBSCO (CINAHL), and China National Knowledge Infrastructure. The search was limited to randomized controlled trials (RCTs). All of the electronic search strategies for all databases are provided in Supplementary Table S1
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