Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2025

DOI

10.1186/s13098-025-01974-4

Publication Title

Diabetology & Metabolic Syndrome

Volume

17

Issue

1

Pages

406 (1-22)

Abstract

Aims This systematic review and meta-analysis aimed to evaluate the effects of high-intensity interval training (HIIT) on cardiometabolic health-related outcomes in patients with type 2 diabetes and obesity (diabesity).

Methods PubMed, Web of Science, Scopus, Science Direct, Cochrane Library, and Google Scholar databases were searched from inception up to November 2024. The search strategy encompassed the following keywords: diabetes, obesity, and HIIT. Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) recruiting adult participants with diabesity and comparing HIIT per se for ≥ 2 weeks in duration with non-exercise standard treatment were included.

Results A total of 18 RCTs qualified involving 504 patients (52/48 women/men ratio; 55.0 ± 11.8 years; 31.0 ± 6.9 kg/m2). Body mass [standardized mean differences (SMD) -0.36 kg, 95% confidence intervals (CI) -0.71 to -0.01], body mass index (SMD -0.57 kg/m2, 95% CI -0.92 to -0.21), waist-to-hip ratio (SMD -1.68, 95% CI -2.50 to -0.86), fasting blood glucose (SMD -0.64 mmol/L, 95% CI -1.03 to -0.24), glycated hemoglobin (SMD -1.08%, 95% CI -1.68 to -0.47), fasting insulin (SMD -0.79 mIU/L, 95% CI -1.28 to -0.31), homeostatic model assessment for insulin resistance (SMD -0.95, 95% CI -1.43 to -0.47), low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (SMD -0.64 mg/dL, 95% CI -1.23 to -0.06), triglycerides (SMD -0.64 mg/dL, 95% CI -1.02 to -0.26), and total cholesterol (SMD -0.66 mg/dL, 95% CI -1.23 to -0.08) improved compared to standard treatment without exercise. Conclusions The present findings suggest that HIIT improves several markers of metabolic health and cardiovascular risk, even without significant body composition improvements in patients with diabesity.

Open science framework registry. https://osf.io/rtb42.

Rights

© The Authors 2025.

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this license to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder.

Data Availability

Article states: "The data are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request."

Original Publication Citation

Al-Mhanna, S. B., Franklin, B. A., Tarnopolsky, M. A., Hawley, J. A., Jakicic, J. M., Stamatakis, E., Little, J. P., Pescatello, L. S., Riebe, D., Thompson, W. R., Skinner, J. S., Colberg, S. R., Ehrman, J. K., Metsios, G. S., Douda, H. T., Omar, N., Alghannam, A. F., & Batrakoulis, A. (2025). Impact of high-intensity interval training on cardiometabolic health in patients with diabesity: A systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Diabetology & Metabolic Syndrome, 17(1), 1-22, Article 406. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13098-025-01974-4

ORCID

0000-0001-7574-2533 (Colberg)

Additional Files
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