COVID-19 Pandemic and Exercise (COPE) trial: a multigroup pragmatic randomised controlled trial examining effects of app-based at-home exercise programs on depressive symptoms

  1. Eli Puterman
  2. Benjamin Hives
  3. Nicole Mazara
  4. Nikol Grishin
  5. Joshua Webster
  6. Stacey Hutton
  7. Michael Stephen Koehle
  8. Yan Liu
  9. Mark R Beauchamp

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Abstract

The number of adults across the globe with significant depressive symptoms has grown substantially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The extant literature supports exercise as a potent behaviour that can significantly reduce depressive symptoms in clinical and non-clinical populations.

Objective

Using a suite of mobile applications, at-home exercise, including high intensity interval training (HIIT) and/or yoga, was completed to reduce depressive symptoms in the general population in the early months of the pandemic.

Methods

A 6-week, parallel, multiarm, pragmatic randomised controlled trial was completed with four groups: (1) HIIT, (2) Yoga, (3) HIIT+yoga, and (4) waitlist control (WLC). Low active, English-speaking, non-retired Canadians aged 18–64 years were included. Depressive symptoms were measured at baseline and weekly following randomisation.

Results

A total of 334 participants were randomised to one of four groups. No differences in depressive symptoms were evident at baseline. The results of latent growth modelling showed significant treatment effects in depressive symptoms for each active group compared with the WLC, with small effect sizes (ESs) in the community-based sample of participants. Treatment groups were not significantly different from each other. Effect sizes were very large (eg, week 6 ES range=−2.34 to −2.52) when restricting the analysis only to participants with high depressive symptoms at baseline.

Conclusions

At-home exercise is a potent behaviour to improve mental health in adults during the pandemic, especially in those with increased levels of depressive symptoms. Promotion of at-home exercise may be a global public health target with important personal, social and economic implications as the world emerges scathed by the pandemic.

Trial registration number

NCT04400279 .

Article activity feed

  1. Version published to 10.1136/bjsports-2021-104379
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.14.21255519: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    EthicsIRB: Study protocol was approved by the University of British Columbia’s Behavioral Review Ethics Board (#H20-01497), and registered at clinicaltrials.gov (#NCT04400279) and the Open Science Framework (
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    RandomizationTrial Design: The COvid-19 Pandemic and Exercise (COPE) Trial was a parallel randomized controlled trial, with participants allocated randomly to 1 of 4 treatment groups: 1) HIIT, 2) Yoga, 3) HIIT+Yoga, or 4) WLC.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Trial Design: The COvid-19 Pandemic and Exercise (COPE) Trial was a parallel randomized controlled trial, with participants allocated randomly to 1 of 4 treatment groups: 1) HIIT, 2) Yoga, 3) HIIT+Yoga, or 4) WLC.
    COPE
    suggested: (COPE, RRID:SCR_009153)

    Results from OddPub: Thank you for sharing your data.

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: We found the following clinical trial numbers in your paper:

    IdentifierStatusTitle
    NCT04400279CompletedThe COVID-19 Pandemic and Exercise Study

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.04.14.21255519v1 on medRxiv