ReviewThe effect of walking intervention on blood pressure control: A systematic review
Section snippets
Background
Hypertension is a major public health problem (National Institute for Clinical Excellence NICE, 2004, World Health Organisation, 2002, World Health Organisation, 2003) and a major risk factor for cerebrovascular and ischaemic heart disease (World Health Organisation, 2002). Increased physical activity has been recommended as an important lifestyle modification for the prevention and management of hypertension (Chobanian et al., 2003, Guidelines Committee of European Society of Hypertension, 2003
Study criteria
Studies were included if they met the following criteria: (1) a randomised controlled trial design; (2) the intervention group was compared with a non-exercising control group; (3) the study samples were restricted to adults aged 16 and over; (4) the intervention focused on walking with no lower limit placed on the length of the intervention period; and (5) blood pressure was an outcome. Studies that included a combination of walking and other activities were not included as we were interested
Results
Our searches identified 3483 potentially relevant papers. A further 62 potentially relevant papers were identified from other sources (websites, referenced lists, own archives, experts). Of these 3545, 3447 were excluded based on a review of title or abstract (Fig. 1). Of the 98 potentially relevant studies, 71 were excluded following review of the full paper. Thus 27 trials met our inclusion criteria (Table 1).
Discussion
This review found that there is evidence showing beneficial effects of walking on lowering either systolic or diastolic blood pressure or both. Trial interventions which showed a beneficial effect on blood pressure tended to have larger sample size, higher baseline blood pressure level and employed moderate to high-intensity walking compared to those trials not showing a beneficial effect. These interventions were also of slightly longer duration although on average, the minutes per session and
Conclusion
In this review, about one third of trials found an effect of walking intervention on blood pressure control. The trials that generated beneficial results on blood pressure reduction were those that had longer mean intervention period, larger sample size and higher walking intensity. This review, with no language limitation and from good quality evidence, found the effect of walking interventions on controlling either systolic or diastolic blood pressure, or both. Although walking is a
Acknowledgment
We acknowledge the financial support from Tzu-Chi College of Technology, Hualien, Taiwan (Project number: TCCT-952A08).
Conflict of interest
We declare that there is no any conflicts of interest.
Ethical approval
Ethical approval was not sought for this systematic review.
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