Aerobic exercise interventions for older adults with cognitive frailty: a systematic review.

Authors

Xu Zhou, Lin Chen, Zheng Huang, Zihao Zhang, Meng Li, Zhongfang Yang

Published in

Frontiers in aging neuroscience. Volume 18. Pages 1747309. Epub Jun 25, 2026.

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to systematically review the effects of aerobic exercise on cognitive function in older adults using randomized controlled trials (RCTs).
This study was a systematic review.
Ten databases, namely PubMed, the Cochrane Library, Wanfang, China National Knowledge Infrastructure (CNKI), SinoMed, Medline, Embase, the Social Science Citation Index (SSCI), Bielefeld Academic Search Engine (BASE), and OpenGrey, were searched from their inception to 30 April 2026.
The randomized controlled trials of the aerobic exercise interventions for the cognitive function of older adults were addressed.
A total of 16 studies were included in the review. The primary conclusion of the quoted studies was that they evaluated the effects of interventions on cognitive function. Many studies (68.8%) used a single-blinded design, while 6.3% used a double-blind design and 25% used an open-label design. Overall, 14 studies (87.5%) reported significant cognitive benefits. Interventions were classified as pure aerobic (n = 7), intrinsic/embedded (n = 6), simultaneous dual-task (n = 2), and sequential (n = 1) interventions. All pure aerobic and dual-task interventions improved cognition; the single sequential trial showed no cognitive gain. Intrinsic/embedded interventions consistently enhanced both cognitive and physical outcomes. Two studies (12.5%) found no overall cognitive improvement, but one reported improvements in male patients. Intensity monitoring was heterogeneous. Quality assessment indicated a low risk of bias in a majority of trials.
These findings prove that aerobic exercise benefits cognition, verbal fluency, attention, sleep quality, executive function, flanker task reaction time, and postural balance. Simultaneous dual-task aerobic exercise may yield larger executive and memory gains than lower-cognitive-load activities.
PROSPERO, CRD420251061109.

PMID:
42428676
Bibliographic data and abstract were imported from PubMed on 10 Jul 2026.

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