ReviewHealthcare (Basel, Switzerland)2025
What Interventions Focused on Physical Activity Could Improve Postpartum Depression Symptoms? An Overview of Systematic Reviews with Meta-Analysis.
Review in Healthcare (Basel, Switzerland), 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
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Abstract
objectivesThe objective of this overview of systematic reviews with meta-analysis was to summarize the evidence on the possible effectiveness of interventions focused on physical activity in improving and preventing postpartum depression symptoms.
methodsCINAHL (via EBSCOhost), Embase, Epistemonikos, PsycINFO, PubMed, Scopus, SPORTDiscus (via EBSCOhost), and the Cochrane library were searched from inception to 19 February 2025. The methodological quality of the included reviews was assessed with AMSTAR 2. The degree of overlap between meta-analyses was calculated.
resultsA total of eight systematic reviews were included. Overall, the included meta-analyses showed favorable results regarding the effects of physical activity on postpartum depression symptoms. Considering specific physical activity modalities, the largest number of meta-analyses focused on aerobic exercise, yoga, or multimodal exercise. In all three cases, most meta-analyses found that aerobic exercise, yoga, and multimodal exercise could be beneficial in reducing postpartum depression symptoms. Furthermore, several meta-analyses explored the effectiveness of walking, finding positive results in favor of this intervention in reducing postpartum depression symptoms. Finally, movement in water was only explored in one meta-analysis, and no differences were found between these interventions and control groups.
conclusionsAerobic exercise, walking, yoga, and multimodal exercise programs may improve postpartum depression symptoms. Movement in water was not more effective than control groups for reducing this outcome. However, the results of our overview should be considered with caution, since important methodological and clinical implications have been discussed (e.g., lack of subgroups by prevention and treatment) and should guide the development of future systematic reviews on this topic.
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