Bigarella LG, Ballotin VR, Mazurkiewicz LF, et al. - The results imply that in older patients, exercise produces a moderate improvement in depression and depressive symptoms. Physical activity for older adults was recommended. Researchers performed an umbrella review of meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate the effects of an exercise intervention for depression in older adults (e.g. 60+).

• The study enrolled 12 meta-analyses of 97 RCTs.

• It was shown that AMSTAR 2 rating was considered critically low in five studies, low in six studies, and high in one study.

• The study found variations in effect size expressed by the standardized mean difference (SMD) between studies from −0.90 (95% CI = −1.51; −0.28) to −0.14 (95% CI = −0.36; 0.07) in favor of the exercise intervention.

• It has been reported that pooling of the effect sizes produced a statistically significant moderate effect in which exercise was correlated with lower levels of depression and depressive symptoms (OR = 2.24, 95% CI 1.77; 2.84)