OBJECTIVE: The aim of this study was to investigate the clinical efficacy of exercise intervention in the treatment of patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) by meta-analysis. METHODS: From January 2000 to January 2022, PubMed, Web of Science, Embase, CNKI, and WanFang databases were searched for all studies on the clinical efficacy of exercise intervention in the treatment of AD patients. Stata 17.0 statistical software was used for meta-analysis. RESULTS: Specifically, data of 983 patients were subjected to meta-analysis, including 463 patients in the control group (conventional drug therapy) and 520 patients in the treatment group (physical exercise on the basis of conventional therapy). The results of meta-analysis showed that Mini-Mental State Examination (MMSE) score and Activities of Daily Living Scale (ADL) score in the treatment group were significantly higher than those in the control group. Further subgroup analysis of exercise intervention > 16 weeks found that MMSE and ADL scores in the treatment group were significantly higher than those in the control group. Subgroup analysis of exercise intervention <= 16 weeks demonstrated that MMSE and ADL in the treatment group were higher than those in the control group. In addition, the treatment group had a significant lower Neuropsychiatric Inventory (NPI) score compared with the control group (SMD -0.76, 95% CI (-1.37 to -0.16), p = 0.013), subgroup analysis showed that the NPI score in the treatment group were lower than that in the control group when exercise intervention was > 16 weeks (SMD -1.01, 95% CI (-1.99 to -0.04), p = 0.042) and <= 16 weeks (SMD 0.43, 95% CI (-0.82 to -0.03), p = 0.034). CONCLUSION: Exercise intervention can improve the neuropsychiatric symptoms, activities of daily living and cognitive function of AD patients, but the improvement is not significant in case of exercise intervention <= 16 weeks.

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