Exercise interventions for treating depression after stroke: A protocol for systematic review and meta-analysi

Review question / Objective: Post-stroke depression (PSD) is one of the most common neuropsychiatric complications after stroke and are associated with increased mortality and poor functional outcomes.Strong evidence shows that exercise has benefits for depression.But it is no clear whether exercise has benefits for PSD.Therefor our purpose of this systematic review is to explore the effects of exercise on post-stroke depression and to determine safe and effective exercise prescriptions.Condition being studied: Post-stroke depression (PSD).PubMed, EMBASE, and Cochrane Library databases will be searched using prespecified search strategies.Randomized controlled trials and non-randomized prospective controlled cohort studies regarding exercise for PSD will be included in this study.The primary outcomes are depression scale and stroke outcome.The secondary outcomes are the occurrence of adverse events, cognitive function, quality of life indices, and the expression of nerve cell factors.The methodological quality of each study will be evaluated by the physiotherapy evidence database scale.The heterogeneity will be evaluated using the I2 test.If I2>50%, the random effects models will be used to analyze.Otherwise, the fixed model will be used to pool the data.