Health Benefits of Different Sports: a Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis of Longitudinal and Intervention Studies Including 2.6 Million Adult Participants

Sports Medicine - Open

Table 6 The associations between participation in a given sport and the risk of mortality and morbidity: results of nine meta-analyses of longitudinal studies

Exposure/outcome	n*	n_events^†	HR^‡	95% CI^§	p_d^∥	I² (%)	τ^2¶	Q**	p^††	95% PI^‡‡
*Cycling*
All-cause mortality	~ 637,500 (8)	41,720	0.79	0.73, 0.84	< 0.001	63.2	0.01	18.44	0.010	0.67, 0.92
Cancer mortality	~ 552,000 (6)	13,101	0.90	0.85, 0.96	0.001	0.0	0.00	2.80	0.731	0.85, 0.96
Cardiovascular mortality	~ 627,100 (7)	9,382	0.80	0.74, 0.86	< 0.001	0.0	0.00	2.57	0.860	0.74, 0.86
Cardiovascular disease	~ 74,100 (4)	~ 7,800	0.93	0.83, 1.04	0.230	73.9	0.01	10.59	0.014	0.75, 1.16
Coronary heart disease	~ 513,600 (3)	21,933	0.84	0.80, 0.89	< 0.001	0.0	0.00	0.63	0.728	0.80, 0.89
*Running*
All-cause mortality	506,584 (7)	142,162	0.77	0.70, 0.85	< 0.001	70.3	0.01	37.75	< 0.001	0.61, 0.96
Cancer mortality	~ 498,100 (6)	~ 39,500	0.80	0.72, 0.89	< 0.001	35.6	0.01	8.29	0.218	0.66, 0.97
Cardiovascular mortality	479,920 (5)	41,059	0.73	0.57, 0.94	0.016	82.0	0.06	33.39	< 0.001	0.43, 1.24
*Swimming*
All-cause mortality	371,031 (4)	129,661	0.76	0.63, 0.92	0.005	91.4	0.03	43.81	< 0.001	0.52, 1.12

^*Pooled sample size (number of studies)
^†Pooled number of mortality or morbidity events
^‡Pooled hazard ratio. A value below one indicates a lower risk of the given mortality or morbidity outcome over the follow-up periods among individuals who participated in the given sport
^§95% confidence interval for HR
∥p-value for HR
^¶Tau-squared measure of heterogeneity between studies
^**Cochran’s Q
^††p-value from the Cochran’s Q test of heterogeneity between studies
^‡‡95% prediction interval for HR