Aerobic exercise and cognitive functioning in schizophrenia: Results of a 1-year follow-up from a randomized controlled trial

Takeshi Shimada; Shoko Ito; Aya Makabe; Ayumi Yamanushi; Ami Takenaka; Kojiro Kawano; Masayoshi Kobayashi

doi:10.1016/j.psychres.2020.112854

Aerobic exercise and cognitive functioning in schizophrenia: Results of a 1-year follow-up from a randomized controlled trial

Psychiatry Res. 2020 Feb 5:286:112854. doi: 10.1016/j.psychres.2020.112854. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Takeshi Shimada¹, Shoko Ito², Aya Makabe², Ayumi Yamanushi², Ami Takenaka², Kojiro Kawano³, Masayoshi Kobayashi⁴

Affiliations

¹ Medical Corporation Seitaikai Mental Support Soyokaze Hospital, Nagano, Japan. Electronic address: ot@seitaikai.or.jp.
² Medical Corporation Seitaikai Mental Support Soyokaze Hospital, Nagano, Japan.
³ Medical Corparation Yuaikai Tikumaso Mental Hospital, Nagano, Japan.
⁴ Department of Health Sciences, Graduate School of Medicine, Shinshu University, Nagano, Japan.

PMID: 32078891
DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2020.112854

Abstract

We previously reported that adding combined, individual, and group aerobic exercise (AE) interventions to the treatment as usual (TAU) for schizophrenia showed significant improvements in cognition and other outcomes compared to those with TAU alone in a randomized controlled trial. Following the promising results of our previous study, this 1-year follow-up study evaluated the improvements in cognition and other outcomes with TAU + AE compared to those with TAU alone. Of 41 randomized patients, 40 were included in the intent-to-treat population-20 in the TAU + AE and 20 in the TAU alone; all patients completed the 1-year follow-up. Mixed models were applied to assess changes in outcome measures over time from baseline to 1-year follow-up. At 1-year follow-up, the TAU + AE demonstrated significant group by time interaction effects in several cognitive domains, intrinsic motivation, negative symptom, interpersonal relations, and functional outcome compared with the TAU alone. Our results demonstrate that the improvements in cognition and other outcomes with TAU + AE were maintained and that functional outcome improved over 1-year follow-up. These findings show that the improvements sustained for each outcome over 1 year have the potential to offer opportunities for greater transitions to improvement of functional outcome.