Physical Exercise and Depressive Symptoms in Moderately or Severely Depressed Adults

Do Moderately and Severely Depressed Individuals Derive the Same Psychological Benefits From a 10-weeks Long Aerobic Exercise Program ?

Status

Completed

Phases

Study type

Interventional

Source

ClinicalTrials.gov

Registry ID

NCT05703776

Acronym

EXIMOS

Enrollment

Registered

2023-01-30

Start date

2022-01-19

Completion date

2022-05-01

Last updated

2023-01-30

For informational purposes only — not medical advice. Sourced from public registries and may not reflect the latest updates. Terms

Conditions

Depressive Symptoms

Keywords

add-on treatment

Brief summary

This study is a comparative trial comparing the time course of depressive symptoms between moderately and severely depressed participants over a 10-week long exercise program

Detailed description

Sixty depressed French adults (34 with symptoms of moderate intensity and 26 with symptoms of severe intensity as defined by the PHQ-9 cutting scores) voluntarily participated in our comparative trial. A control group (waiting list) of n = 16 including 8 severely depressed and 8 moderately depressed participants received no physical exercise. For the remaining 44 participants (26 with moderate-intensity depressive symptoms and 18 with high-intensity depressive symptoms), two weekly Nordic Walking sessions of 1h were performed for 10 consecutive weeks. Depressive symptoms were assessed using standard self-report questionnaires at various time points: 1/ enrollment (using the PHQ-9), and then (2) just before the beginning of the exercise intervention (pre-intervention; using the BDI-II), 2/ at the end of Week 5 (mid-intervention; using the BDI-II), and 3/ the day following the end of the exercise program (post-intervention)

Interventions

BEHAVIORALNordic Walking

Nordic Walking (NW) is an aerobic physical activity where regular walking is enhanced by the addition of the active use of specifically designed NW poles. The physical strain is distributed in a balanced way to various muscle groups of the whole body.

Study design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Intervention model

PARALLEL

Primary purpose

SUPPORTIVE_CARE

Masking

NONE

Intervention model description

open randomized controlled trial

Eligibility

Sex/Gender

ALL

Age

18 Years to 65 Years

Healthy volunteers

Yes

Inclusion criteria

* PHQ-9 (Kroenke et al., 2001) score of 10 or above

Exclusion criteria

* medical contraindication to moderate-intensity aerobic exercise * inability to read French language

Design outcomes

Primary

Measure	Time frame	Description
change in the intensity of depressive symptoms	10 weeks	self-evaluated intensity of depressive symptoms. Was obtained using the standard Beck Depression Inventory (BDI-II; Beck et al., 1996)

Countries

France

Outcome results

None listed

Source: ClinicalTrials.gov · Data processed: Feb 4, 2026