1.Background
Asthma in children is a common non-infectious chronic respiratory
disease characterized by episodic and persistent airflow restriction,
with symptoms of wheezing, coughing, chest tightness and shortness of
breath [1,2]. Asthma has become more common globally in recent
years, which is one of the most important global public health
problems. It is estimated that around 300 million people suffer from
asthma, and the incidence of asthma is likely to increase as the
proportion of the urban population increases [3]. The prevalence of
asthma in children (9.5%) is higher than adults (7.7%), and women
(9.2%) higher than men (7.0%) [4]. Approximately 157,000 children
hospitalized with asthma and 640,000 emergency room visits are recorded
in the United States [5]. Asthma negatively affects children’s
quality of life, exercise capacity, and lung function, while increasing
family stress and socioeconomic burden [6]. Treatment goals for
childhood asthma are to minimize the negative impact of these events and
prevent their recurrence.
Currently, β2-agonists and glucocorticoids, as the main drugs for
childhood asthma, are widely used in clinical practice, but most of the
drugs have side effects. Therefore, safer and more effective
interventions are being explored. As a core component of non-drug
therapy, PR is a comprehensive intervention that mainly includes
exercise training, family education, and health education, aiming to
improve the physical and mental health of patients and promote long-term
health [7,8]. Exercise training as the cornerstone of PR, mainly
including endurance training, resistance/strength training, inspiratory
muscle training, interval training, and neuromuscular electrical
stimulation [8], and has been shown to improve asthma symptoms and
severity, quality of life, and lung function [9-11]. After a search
we found that formal PR programs are very rare in a child environment,
and there is a lack of data describing potential benefits for childhood
asthma, especially whether exercise-based PR can be used as an
adjunctive treatment for childhood asthma. Thus, this systematic review
aimed to systematize the different designs used to provide
exercise-based PR designs for childhood asthma and explore which ones
are the most effective.
METHODS