Exercise as a psychosocial intervention in cancer care: A bibliometric and systematic review of mechanisms and outcomes
Abstract
Cancer patients often experience anxiety and depression during the progression of their disease. Traditional psychological interventions face limitations due to drug side effects and uneven resource allocation. Exercise therapy has become an important rehabilitation strategy through multi-pathway mechanisms, but the heterogeneity of exercise therapy and its mechanisms remains understudied. This study combined bibliometrics and systematic reviews to retrieve literature on exercise intervention and psychosocial rehabilitation of cancer in the Web of Science (WOS) Core Collection (2000–2023). Bibliometric methods were used to analyze the exercise-psychology-biomarker network quantitatively, and a total of 51 high-quality studies that met the PRISMA guidelines were included. Bibliometric analysis showed that the research showed an exponential growth trend, with the United States, Germany, and China as the core research areas; high-frequency cited literature confirmed that aerobic combined resistance training has a significant effect on alleviating psychological distress and improving quality of life. The systematic review further showed that exercise achieves psychological rehabilitation through the triple pathways regulating hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis function, reducing proinflammatory factors, and enhancing neuroplasticity. This study provides a multi-dimensional evidence chain for the clinical transformation of exercise therapy, and it is recommended that future research focus on gene-environment interactions and the long-term effects of remote exercise intervention models.
Copyright (c) 2025 Jingyi Chen
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
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