Aerobic exercises and cognitive function in post-stroke patients: A systematic review with meta-analysis.

Objective: To study the effect of aerobic exercise on cognitive function of post-stroke patients, especially to identify specific interventions that the most likely to maximize cognitive benefits of stroke patients.

Methods: According to the PRISMA principle, the databases of Web of Science, EMBASE, PubMed and Cochrane library were searched to collect randomized controlled trial data of aerobic exercise on cognitive function intervention of post-stroke patients. The Cochrane bias risk evaluation instrument was used to assess the methodological quality of included studies. Review Manager 5.4.1 software was used to analyze heterogeneity and potential publication bias.

Results: A total of 11 criteria studies that satisfied the association between aerobic exercise and cognitive function following stroke were selected to be included in the review. Global cognition ability was significantly improved after aerobic exercise intervention (0.51; 95% confidence interval [CI] 0.16-0.86; P = .004), moderate intensity had the largest effect size on improving global cognition ability (0.98; 95% CI 0.48-1.47; P = .0001), none of cognitive flexibility, working memory, selective attention and conflict resolution showed the significant difference from zero.

Conclusion: Aerobic exercise has a good impact on enhancing the cognitive dysfunction of patients after stroke, which stroke patients were found to benefit the most from moderate-intensity exercise. However, our studies did not found that aerobic exercise had an active result on cognitive flexibility, working memory, selective attention and contention resolution.