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Record W4407482765 · doi:10.1016/j.inpsyc.2025.100044

A systematic review and meta-analysis on physical activity for the treatment of anxiety in older adults

2025· review· en· W4407482765 on OpenAlexafffund
Zahra Goodarzi, AnneMarie Levy, Carly Whitmore, Titus Chan, Juliette Mojgani, Iulia Niculescu, Abitha Suthakaran, Alastair J. Flint, Amy Gough, Sébastien Grenier, Heli Juola, Kristin Reynolds, Sarah Neil‐Sztramko, Shanna Trenaman, Erica Weir, Michael Van Ameringen, Anthony T. Yeung, Andrea Iaboni

Bibliographic record

VenueInternational Psychogeriatrics · 2025
Typereview
Languageen
FieldMedicine
TopicPhysical Activity and Health
Canadian institutionsKingston Health Sciences CentreUniversité de MontréalUniversity of ManitobaUniversity of British ColumbiaMontreal Heart InstituteMcMaster UniversitySunnybrook Health Science CentreToronto Rehabilitation InstituteHamilton Health SciencesDalhousie UniversityLibin Cardiovascular Institute of AlbertaUniversity Health NetworkCanadian Mental Health AssociationUniversity of Calgary
FundersPublic Health AgencyPublic Health Agency of Canada
KeywordsMeta-analysisAnxietyPsychologyMEDLINEPhysical activityClinical psychologySystematic reviewGerontologyMedicinePsychiatryPhysical therapyInternal medicinePolitical science

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

OBJECTIVES: Symptoms of anxiety and anxiety disorders negatively impact the quality of life of older adults. Physical activity is a potentially accessible intervention with other health benefits and minimal risk, yet its impact on anxiety in older adults is unclear. DESIGN: Systematic review and meta-analysis. SETTING: Included databases were MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, PsycINFO and CINHAL were searched from inception to June 23, 2023. PARTICIPANTS, INTERVENTIONS, MEASUREMENTS: We included randomized controlled trials of older adults who reported anxiety symptoms or disorders at baseline, that compared physical activity interventions with a non-physical activity comparator. All steps were done in duplicate, and certainty of evidence was with Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development, and Evaluations. Random effects meta-analyses were performed. RESULTS: 10,763 citations were reviewed, 13 studies were included in meta-analyses. At baseline, participants self-reported low to moderate levels of anxiety and different levels of fitness. In the meta-analysis, the physical activity intervention had a medium effect in decreasing the severity of anxiety symptoms compared to the control (standardized mean differences (SMD) - 0.66; 95 % Confidence Interval (CI) - 0.89, - 0.43). Subgroup analyses indicated reductions in symptom severity when only assessing the effects of in-person interventions (SMD: - 0.59; 95 %CI: - 0.79, - 0.38), studies of participants without pre-existing diseases (SMD: - 0.74; 95 % CI: - 0.99, - 0.50), resistance training (SMD: - 0.76; 95 % CI: - 1.15, - 0.38) and aerobic exercise (SMD: - 0.82; 95 % CI: - 1.15, - 0.49). Studies had small sample sizes and high risk of bias. CONCLUSIONS: Physical activity reduces symptoms of anxiety in older adults and is an acceptable and promising intervention to incorporate into care planning.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame distilled prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.000
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.000
Version: codex-gemma-dda1882f352aValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Meta-analysis · Consensus signal: none
GenreCandidate signal: Review · Consensus signal: Review
Teacher disagreement score0.843
Threshold uncertainty score0.606

Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0050.003
Bibliometrics0.0000.001
Science and technology studies0.0000.000
Scholarly communication0.0000.000
Open science0.0000.000
Research integrity0.0000.000
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0000.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.089
GPT teacher head0.449
Teacher spread0.360 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designMeta-analysis
Domainnot available
GenreReview

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations7
Published2025
Admission routes2
Has abstractyes

Explore more

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