Effects of Physical Exercise on Inflammatory Biomarkers in patients with Chronic Kidney Disease: A Meta-Analysis

Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) is found to be associated with systemic inflammation with increased levels of inflammatory biomarkers which increases the risk of cardiovascular events in these patients. This systematic review and meta-analysis was done to assess the effects of exercise on inflammatory biomarkers in patients with CKD. PubMed, Google Scholar, Scopus and PEDro databases were systematically searched. All published articles till March 2023 were included in this review. Of the articles retrieved 15 were included in qualitative analysis and among them 9 were quantitatively analysed. Included studies were of fair and good quality on PEDro rating scale. Cochrane Collaboration tool of risk of bias was used to assess the risk of bias. Results of the analysis suggested that exercise is effective in lowering the level of inflammatory C-reactive protein (CRP) level. The result was statistically significant (mean difference = -1.51, 95% CI: -2.23 to -0.79, I2= 71%, p-value 0.004). For tumour necrosis factor (TNF- α) the differences were found statistically significant (mean difference = -0.67, 95 % CI: -1.31 to -0.03, I2= 81%, p-value