Impacto de los videojuegos activos sobre el índice de masa corporal en niños y adolescentesrevisión sistemática y metaanálisis evaluando la calidad de los estudios primarios

Abstract

Nowadays, the idea of video games associated with passive entertainment and sedentarism has experienced a radical turn with the arrival of a new generation of video games, active video games, which involve the realization of physical activity. The main objective of this thesis was to study through a meta-analysis of primary studies, the impact of active video games on BMI in children and adolescents. For that, a comprehensive literature research was conducted due clinical trials (both controlled and uncontrolled) in children and adolescents, written in English or Spanish, whose intervention was based on active video games. The individual results of the determinations of the 12 studies showed a high heterogeneity among them (Q = 102.71, df = 15, p <0.001, I2 = 85.40%,  = 0.55). The overall effect of the intervention intragroup based on active gaming was in favor of the intervention, reaching statistical significance using the fixed effects model: DEM= -0.169; 95% CI (-0.276 to -0.064), p = 0.002 and was on the verge of statistical significance in the random effects model: DEM= -0.201; 95% CI (-0.408 to 0.006), p = 0.057. Besides, the overall intra-group effect in the control group was close to zero (DEM= 0.065), presenting the individual results also high heterogeneity among them. Making a restriction to controlled studies, the mean difference meta-analyzed the group intervened with active video games and the control group was also in favor of the first one and statistically significant. It should be to show that given the novelty of active video games, and that the analyzed studies have evaluated short-term interventions, it is necessary to conduct studies to longer-term with larger sample size, so valid and reliable comparisons could be established and then evaluate the clinical relevance of the effect.