Physical exercise is the best therapy in reducing interleukin-6 levels as an inflammatory mediator: a systematic review

Unhealthy lifestyles such as consuming less nutritious foods, lack of physical activity trigger accelerated aging. Aging occurs due to inflammatory processes in the body associated with increased levels of interleukin-6 (IL-6). IL-6 is a major pro-inflammatory cytokine involved in pathogenesis of various chronic diseases, including cardiovascular disorders, diabetes, and autoimmune conditions. Increased levels of IL-6 are associated with systemic inflammation and poor health outcomes. In recent decades, physical exercise has received attention not only for its role in improving fitness but also as a non-pharmacological intervention to modulate the immune response. Currently, there are scarce data on effects of exercise on the IL-6 response. The underlying mechanisms are also still not clearly understood. The physiological response of exercise to IL-6 is important to know and the underlying molecular mechanisms must be clearly understood in order to understand the stages related to the effect of exercise on increasing IL-6. The objective of this study was to determine the mechanism by which physical activity lowers IL-6 levels. In this systematic review, we searched through literature databases including Science Direct, Web of Science, MEDLINE-Pubmed, and Scopus. Our inclusion criteria covered the papers published over the past five years that addressed IL-6 and physical exercise. The Web of Science, Pubmed, and Science Direct databases were used to locate a total of 126 published papers. For this systematic review, ten papers that met the inclusion criteria were selected and examined. Standard operating procedures were evaluated in this study using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). Based on the results of this systematic study, it is evident that chronic exercise reduces IL-6 levels. Immediately after acute physical exercise, IL-6 levels are increased. However, there was a downward trend in IL-6 levels during chronic physical exercise. Chronic and regular exercise has been shown to reduce IL-6 levels. as a marker of inflammation. If IL-6 levels may be suppressed through exercise, inflammation will decrease, thus preventing aging which is triggered by the accumulation of inflammatory factors.