Sleep quality improvements and maintenance with exercise in older veterans with PTSD: Results from a pilot randomized trial.

BACKGROUND AND AIMS: Identifying novel strategies to improve sleep quality among individuals with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is critically needed. The aim of the study was to evaluate the effects of exercise on sleep quality in older adults with PTSD participating in a 12-week pilot randomized trial of supervised exercise versus waitlist control.

METHODS

This study is a secondary analysis of a randomized, two-group design comparing multicomponent exercise to a waitlist control.

RESULTS

Participants included 48 older Veterans with PTSD. The sample was, on average, 67.5 years old (SD = 3.6), primarily male (92%), and African American or Black (85%). At baseline, more than 90% of participants reported poor sleep quality. Linear models indicated medium effect size differences favoring the intervention group for PSQI global and daytime dysfunction (β's -0.31 to -0.40) and small effect size differences favoring the intervention group for PSQI sleep disturbance, sleep efficiency, sleep latency, sleep quality, and addendum for PTSD (βs -0.13 to -0.24). Within-group changes indicated small improvements in sleep quality in the exercise group (PSQI global, sleep disturbance, sleep duration, latency, quality; d's -0.11 to -0.26). In the control group, small deteriorations (PSQI global, sleep disturbance, daytime of dysfunction, use of sleep medications, sleep efficiency, sleep latency, PTSD sleep addendum) were found. There was no evidence of mediation in the exploratory mediation analysis evaluating the effect of PTSD symptom severity on the relationship between intervention condition (supervised exercise or control) and sleep quality.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings provide preliminary evidence for exercise as a complementary intervention to maintain or improve sleep quality in this population.