Exercise for Depressive Symptoms in Heart Failure Patients?

Although depression in cardiac illness is associated with poor outcome, antidepressant medication has unclear efficacy, and cognitive-behavioral therapy, while more consistently validated, is difficult to deliver. To evaluate the antidepressant effectiveness of aerobic exercise, which alleviates depression in healthy elderly patients, researchers reanalyzed data from a multicenter, randomized, controlled study involving 2322 patients with chronic heart failure (JW Cardiol Apr 8 2009; Beck Depression Inventory [BDI] mean score, 8). Exercise was supervised thrice weekly for 3 months; patients then transitioned to home exercise for 9 months. All patients were called intermittently by research staff.

Compared with the usual-care group, the exerc…