Exercise Therapy Effects on Sleep Apnea from 40 RCTs

1790 patients with Sleep Apnea Syndrome across 40 randomized controlled trials are analyzed for the effects of six exercise therapies on sleep indices, cardiorespiratory fitness, and body composition. The network meta-analysis identifies High-Intensity Interval Training (HIIT) as most effective for sleep and cardiorespiratory outcomes, while Aerobic Training (AT) ranks highest for body composition.

Use Cases

• Compare the relative effectiveness of six exercise interventions (e.g., HIIT, AT, ACRT) using SUCRA and PrBest ranking scores for sleep indices, cardiorespiratory fitness, and body composition.
• Analyze the statistical significance of direct comparisons between specific therapies, such as Aerobic Combined with Resistance Training (ACRT) versus Respiratory Exercise (RE), using provided SMD, 95% CI, and P-value data.
• Investigate heterogeneity patterns across the 40 RCTs, particularly for body composition outcomes, to inform future clinical trial design.

Strengths

• Analysis is based on 40 randomized controlled trials, a substantial evidence base for a meta-analysis.
• Includes data from 1790 individual patients with Sleep Apnea Syndrome.
• Employs network meta-analysis methodology to compare six distinct exercise therapy modalities.

Limitations

• The underlying patient-level data is not provided; the dataset contains aggregated analysis results in a DOCX document.
• Significant heterogeneity was reported for several outcome comparisons, particularly for body composition.
• The dataset is a static 613.4 KB document, limiting computational analysis without data extraction.

Provenance

Source

Systematic review and network meta-analysis conducted by Zhenhao Ma.

Collection Method

Data aggregated from 40 RCTs identified via systematic search of six databases (PubMed, Web of Science, EBSCO, Embase, Cochrane Library, China National Knowledge Infrastructure).

Freshness

Last updated March 25, 2026.