Association between physical activity and infertility: a comprehensive systematic review and meta-analysis

BACKGROUND: Physical activity (PA) may protect against infertility by modulating the hypothalamic-pituitary–gonadal axis, thereby reducing gonadotropin levels, elevating immune function, and inhibiting inflammation and circulating sex hormones. However, whether PA reduces the risk of infertility remains largely unknown. We therefore conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to determine the preventive effects of PA on infertility. METHODS: We searched PubMed, Cochrane Library, EMBASE, and CINAHL databases to retrieve published epidemiologic studies on the relationship between PA and infertility. Following the PRISMA guidelines, we selected English literature publishedprior to 11 April 2022, and assessed study quality using the Newcastle–Ottawa Scale. Our protocol, including the full methods employed for this review, is available on PROSPERO (ID = CRD42020143344). RESULTS: Six cohort studies and four case–control studies based on 708,965 subjects and 12,580 cases were eventually screened and retained. High levels of PA were shown to reduced risk of infertility relative to low levels (cumulative relative risk [RR] = 0.59, with a 95% confidence interval CI 0.49–0.71), and we reported results for cohort studies (RR = 0.63, 95% CI 0.50–0.79) and case–control studies (RR = 0.49, 95% CI 0.35–0.67). Our findings were comparable for men (RR = 0.65, 95% CI 0.41–1.04) and women (RR = 0.56, 95% CI 0.47–0.66). The meta-analysis of six risk estimates from five studies of low, moderate, and high PA levels showed that moderate PA may also reduce the risk of infertility compared with low PA (RR = 0.54, 95% CI 0.38–0.77). However, high PA also appeared to slightly augment the risk of infertility compared with moderate PA (RR = 1.31, 95% CI 1.08–1.59). CONCLUSIONS: This present systematic review comprehensively reflected an inverse relationship between different levels of PA and infertility, and our meta-analysis showed that a moderate-to-high PA level significantly reduced the overall risk of infertility, and that this level of PA activity was a common protective factor. In addition, limited evidence suggested that compliance with international PA guidelines would greatly lower the risk of infertility (RR = 0.58, 95% CI 0.45–0.74; I(2) = 0.0%). Future studies, however, need to be executed to further determine the frequency, optimal dosage, and duration required to effectively attenuate the risk of infertility. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12967-022-03426-3.