Purpose: Many studies have investigated the association between handgrip strength (HGS) and depressive symptoms, but the conclusion remain controversial. We performed a meta-analysis to evaluate the longitudinal association between HGS and risk of depressive symptoms.
Methods: PubMed, PSYCINFO and EMBASE databases were searched for eligible publications up to April 2020. Pooled relative risks (RRs) with 95% confidence intervals were calculated using random-effects model. Publication bias was estimated using Egger's test and the funnel plot. Newcastle-Ottawa Scale (NOS) was used to evaluate the quality of eligible studies.
Results: The present meta-analysis included 8 cohort studies with 30,727 participants. Overall, higher HGS was related to a decreased risk of depressive symptoms: the pooled risk ratio (RR) of 0.74 [95% confidence intervals (CI) 0.65-0.85] with a moderate heterogeneity (I2 = 60.5%, P = 0.013). HGS was significantly associated with a reduced risk of depressive symptoms in males (RR = 0.69; 95% CI 0.50-0.94), but not in females.
Conclusions: Lower HGS was associated with an increased risk of depressive symptoms. Further studies are needed to confirm these findings and to investigate the sex differences.
Keywords: Cohort study; Depressive symptoms; Handgrip strength; Meta-analysis.
© 2021. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.