The Effect of Lifestyle Intervention on Health-Related Quality of Life in Adults with Metabolic Syndrome: A Meta-Analysis
What this study found
Lifestyle interventions significantly improve HRQoL across physical and mental domains in adults with metabolic syndrome. Physical HRQoL improvements include General Health (g=0.76), Bodily Pain (g=0.55), Physical Function (g=0.51), and Role Physical (g=0.54); overall physical HRQoL effect size g=0.61. Mental HRQoL improvements include Mental Health (g=0.71), Social Functioning (g=0.76), Role Emotional (g=0.86), Vitality (g=1.01); overall mental HRQoL effect size g=0.84. The combined result indicates meaningful HRQoL gains with lifestyle interventions; interpretation should consider…
- Study & population
- Seven randomized controlled trials (N=637) in adults (≥18 years) with metabolic syndrome; mean age 54.7 years; mixed-sex samples with some male-only studies; trials conducted across Asia, North America, and South America; lifestyle interventions focused on diet, physical activity, and health education; comparator: general lifestyle information or usual…
- Key limitation
- Intervention duration ranged 12–36 weeks, limiting long-term conclusions; small number of RCTs with modest total sample; sex-specific effects could not be analyzed; substantial heterogeneity across studies; potential publication bias for physical HRQoL outcomes.
View source
Open PDFOriginal abstract
The aim of this meta-analysis was to assess the effects of a lifestyle intervention through health education on nutrition, physical activity, and healthy habits on physical and mental health-related quality of life (HRQoL), in adults with metabolic syndrome (MetS). The databases used were PubMed, WOS, and Scopus. The inclusion criteria were: observational, longitudinal and randomized clinical trial (RCT) study designs, adults (both sexes), with at least two criteria of MetS, lifestyle intervention and comparison with a control group, and a measurement of HRQoL with a validated questionnaire. We analyzed the Hedges’ g and SF-36 score. I2 statistics were calculated and possible publication and small study biases were assessed using Egger’s test and funnel plots. Seven RCTs were selected for meta-analysis, based on 637 study participants. Significant improvements were found in the physical dimensions of the HRQoL scores for subjects in the active intervention compared to the group that received general lifestyle information (Hedges’ g 0.61, 95% confidence interval (CI) = 0.31–0.91). Mental health-related quality of life was also significantly improved in the intervention group compared with the control group (Hedges’ g 0.84, 95% CI = 0.64–1.03). In conclusion, our results suggest that, according to the RCTs selected for this meta-analysis, a lifestyle intervention significantly improves HRQoL in all its domains.