The effect of physical activity interventions on cognition function in patients with diabetes: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: In recent years, studies have revealed that cognition may be impaired by glucose metabolism disorder. Meanwhile, physical activity has been demonstrated to maintain blood glucose. This meta-analysis was conducted to assess the effect of physical activity on cognition in patients with diabetes and provide evidence for the treatment of cognition impairment among them.

Methods: We searched studies published in five databases from 1 January 1984 to 29 August 2020. A random-effect or fixed-effect meta-analysis was used to estimate the pooled effect of physical activity on the change of cognition throughout intervention duration and post-intervention cognition scores by standardized mean difference (SMD) and its 95% confidence interval (CI). We used funnel plots to evaluate the publication bias, I statistic to evaluate the heterogeneity and did subgroup analysis stratified by sample size and follow-up time.

Results: Five eligible studies involving 2581 patients with diabetes were included. The pooled effect of physical activity on cognition improvement in patients with diabetes was significant (SMD = 0.98, 95% CI: 0.34-1.62), while the effect on post-intervention cognition scores was not significant (SMD = 0.35, 95% CI: -0.04-0.73). In the subgroup analysis, the pooled effect was significantly higher in studies of follow-up time less than 1 year (SMD = 2.14, 95% CI: 1.63-2.64), while observing no significant effect in studies of follow-up time over 1 year (SMD = 0.10, 95% CI: -0.11-0.32).

Conclusions: Physical activity is beneficial to improving cognition in patients with diabetes. However, the long-term effect needs to be explored in future studies.