ArticleApplied psychology. Health and well-being2026
Optimal mind-body exercise for quality of life, anxiety, and depression in cancer patients and survivors: A pairwise, network, and dose-response meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.
Article in Applied psychology. Health and well-being, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Optimal mind-body exercise for quality of life, anxiety, and depression in cancer patients and survivors: A pairwise, network, and dose-response meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.Applied psychology. Health and well-being · 2026Article
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5 authors.
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Abstract
Mind-body exercise improves psychological outcomes in cancer patients, but the comparative efficacy of different modalities remains unclear. This study integrates pairwise, network, and dose-response meta-analytic approaches to simultaneously compare multiple mind-body exercise modalities and establish intervention-specific optimal doses in cancer patients. We systematically searched PubMed, Embase, Web of Science, and Cochrane Library from inception to December 31, 2025 for randomized controlled trials examining mind-body exercise interventions (yoga, tai chi, qigong, pilates, and dance) in cancer patients. Primary outcomes included quality of life, depression, and anxiety. We performed pairwise meta-analysis with effect sizes reported as Hedges' g and 95% confidence intervals (CIs), Bayesian network meta-analysis establishing efficacy hierarchies using surface under the cumulative ranking curve (SUCRA) values, and dose-response meta-analysis identifying optimal exercise volumes. We included 73 randomized controlled trials involving 5130 participants. Mind-body exercise significantly improved quality of life (Hedges' g = 0.56, 95% CI: 0.36 to 0.77), reduced depression (Hedges' g = -0.41, 95% CI: -0.65 to -0.17), and alleviated anxiety (Hedges' g = -0.89, 95% CI: -1.40 to -0.37). Network meta-analysis revealed clear efficacy hierarchies: pilates ranked highest for quality of life (SUCRA = 84.80%), yoga for depression (SUCRA = 73.70%), and qigong for anxiety (SUCRA = 83.27%). Dose-response analysis identified an inverted U-shaped relationship with an overall optimal dose of 490 MET-min/week for quality of life (standardized mean difference, SMD = 0.904, 95% credible interval, CrI: 0.603 to 1.235), with intervention-specific optimal doses ranging from 300 to 520 MET-min/week. Mind-body exercise interventions effectively improve quality of life, reduce depression, and alleviate anxiety in cancer patients, with pilates, yoga, and qigong demonstrating superior efficacy across different outcomes, supporting evidence-based, personalized prescription and integration as an accessible, complementary intervention for cancer-related psychological distress.
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Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the Socratic graph.