Home-based interventions to promote physical activity for people living with HIV – a systematic review

ABSTRACT

Although physical activity (PA) improves the physical, mental, and social outcomes of people living with HIV (PLH), multiple barriers prevent them from exercising. In this systematic review, we investigated the effect of home-based interventions to promote physical activity (HBI) among PLH. Randomised trials and quasi-experimental studies published in English until March 2020 were sought in five databases. Independent reviewers performed data extraction, risk of bias assessment and pragmatic-explanatory (PRECIS-2) evaluation of study characteristics. Outcomes included engagement in PA, body composition, cardiorespiratory fitness, strength, metabolic disturbances, and quality of life (QoL). Out of 480 retrieved references, six studies met inclusion criteria. Interventions lasted 12–48 weeks and involved 400 individuals (57.8% women). Ninety-eight (24.5%) participants completed interventions, but dropout rates varied considerably (5.0–54.5%). Resulted showed increased PA (two studies) and improved cardiorespiratory fitness or strength (three and two studies, respectively). Four studies demonstrated reduction of waist circumference and increase in lean body mass. QoL improved in two of three studies. We conclude HBI (aerobic and/or resistance exercises) may contribute to improve PA and/or cardiorespiratory fitness, body composition, strength and QoL of PLH. Further investigation using multi-centre standardised protocols is warranted to provide stronger evidence of their effectiveness in health promotion for PLH.

KEYWORDS:

• HIV
• exercise
• home care services
• clinical trials
• systematic review

Acknowledgements

The authors thank all those that participated direct or indirectly providing technical assistance and contribution to the development of this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Authors’ contributions

ECMS participated in the study conception, data collection and interpretation, writing and review of the manuscript. LRAL participated in the study conception, data collection and interpretation, writing and review of the manuscript. SY contributed to the PRECIS assessment, data interpretation of results and review of the manuscript. PHG (senior researcher) participated in the study conception, data collection and interpretation, writing and review of the manuscript. ACS (senior researcher) participated in the study conception, data interpretation, writing and review of the manuscript.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Conselho Nacional do Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq) under Research Productivity grant number 304928/2018-6 (awarded to ACS) and CAPES under the PhD grant number 33002010068.03 (awarded to ECMS).