Trial reportSleep2021
The acute effects of aerobic exercise on sleep in patients with unipolar depression: a randomized controlled trial.
Trial report in Sleep, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT03673397 (The Acute Effect of Aerobic Exercise on Sleep in Patients With Depression), which is not on this map. Cited by 8 papers.
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
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
The Acute Effect of Aerobic Exercise on Sleep in Patients With Depression: a Randomized Controlled Trial
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 16 citations in OpenAlex.
- Powering RCTs for Marginal Effects With GLMs Using Prognostic Score Adjustment.Statistics in medicine · 2026Article
- The effects of aerobic exercise on sleep quality in older adults with sleep problems: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Residual depression symptoms following nature-based exercise therapies among U.S. service members.Frontiers in physiology · 2026Article
- Predicting Sleep Quality Based on Metabolic, Body Composition, and Physical Fitness Variables in Aged People: Exploratory Analysis with a Conventional Machine Learning Model.Journal of functional morphology and kinesiology · 2025Article
- The impact of lifestyle sports on the sleep quality of depressed high school students in Jiangsu Province, China: based on cross-sectional study.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Effects and neural mechanisms of different physical activity on major depressive disorder based on cerebral multimodality monitoring: a narrative review.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2024Review
- The effects of a single aerobic exercise session on mood and neural emotional reactivity in depressed and healthy young adults: A late positive potential study.Psychophysiology · 2023Article
- The Acute Effects of Aerobic Exercise on Nocturnal and Pre-Sleep Arousal in Patients with Unipolar Depression: Preplanned Secondary Analysis of a Randomized Controlled Trial.Journal of clinical medicine · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
STUDY
objectivesInsomnia increases the risk of negative disease trajectory, relapse, and suicide in patients with depression. We aimed at investigating the effects of a single bout of aerobic exercise, performed after 02:00 pm, on the subsequent night's sleep in patients with depression.
methodsThe study was designed as a two-arm parallel-group, randomized, outcome assessor-blinded, controlled, superiority trial. Patients between 18 and 65 years of age with a primary diagnosis of unipolar depression were included. The intervention was a single 30-minute bout of moderate aerobic exercise. The control group sat and read for 30 minutes. The primary outcome was sleep efficiency measured by polysomnography. Secondary outcomes were other polysomnographic variables, subjective sleep quality, daytime sleepiness, mood states, and adverse events.
resultsNinety-two patients were randomized to the exercise (N = 46) or control group (N = 46). There were no clinically relevant differences at baseline. Intent-to-treat analysis ANCOVA of follow-up sleep efficiency, adjusted for baseline levels and minimization factors, did not detect a significant effect of the allocation (β = -0.93, p = 0.59). There was no evidence for significant differences between both groups in any other objective or subjective sleep outcomes, daytime sleepiness, or adverse events. The intervention had an immediate positive effect on mood states, including depressiveness (β = -0.40, p = 0.003).
conclusionsThis is the first trial to study the effects of a single bout of aerobic exercise on sleep in patients with depression to the best of our knowledge. Aerobic exercise had no effect on sleep efficiency but had a strong beneficial effect on mood and did not increase adverse outcomes. These results add to the growing body of evidence that, contrary to sleep hygiene recommendations, exercise after 02:00 pm is not detrimental for sleep. CLINICAL
trial registrationClinicaltrials.gov, https://clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03673397. Protocol registered on September 17, 2018.
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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 OpenQuestion graph.