(PS2-59) Web-delivered Exercise Interventions Reduce Anxiety Sensitivity: A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial

Anxiety disorders affect 19.1% of the population yearly and has been steadily increasing in all U.S. adults, with a particularly rapid increase in the young adult population (ages 18-25) (National Institute of Mental Health, n.d.; Goodwin et al., 2020). Thus, it is important to develop methods of treatment that can be easily disseminated. Anxiety sensitivity (AS), or the fear of experiencing anxiety-related physiological sensations, is a predictor of the development of anxiety symptoms and disorders and is associated with treatment outcomes (Smits et al., 2019). AS is important for treatment research because it is a malleable transdiagnostic risk factor for anxiety disorders (Fitzgerald et al., 2021). Notably, exercise of various intensities can reduce anxiety sensitivity (Asmundson et al., 2013) and is effective in a therapeutic context when implemented as an interoceptive exposure (Bischoff et al., 2018). However, it remains unclear whether these effects hold when exercise programs are administered via online platforms. Investigating the efficacy of administering exercise interventions online to reduce AS has the potential to be a great benefit given that it is low-cost and can be easily accessed and disseminated. Given that high intensity exercise has been associated with greater changes in AS than other intensities (Moshier et al., 2013), we hypothesize that the HIIT group will lead to greater reductions in AS.

Participants (n = 42) were healthy college aged adults with moderate to high levels of AS, as determined by the Anxiety Sensitivity Index-3 (ASI-3). Participants were randomly assigned to participate in one of three 10-minute Zoom-delivered exercise interventions: high-intensity interval training (HIIT), moderate intensity continuous training (MICT), or a static stretching control. Levels of AS were assessed pre-intervention, post-intervention, and 2 weeks after the intervention using an online questionnaire. We used a repeated measures ANOVA to examine mean differences in ASI-3 scores.

The MICT group showed significantly lower levels of AS immediately post intervention (M = 22.10, SD = 8.47) compared to baseline (pre-intervention) (M = 28.0, SD = 7.41), t(39) = 4.67, p = .001). The Control group followed a similar trend of reductions from baseline (M = 30.2, SD = 9.79) to post intervention (M = 26.1, SD = 11.1), t(39) = 3.29, p = .49. However, these reductions returned to baseline levels at follow-up for both groups. Interestingly, the HIIT group showed no changes in AS scores from baseline (M = 26.1, SD = 12.5) to post-intervention (M = 24.2, SD = 13.7), t(39) = 1.37, p = .904 but significant reductions from baseline to follow-up (M = 17.9, SD = 8.11), t(39) = 4.50, p = .002 were observed.

An acute 10-minute web-delivered HIIT intervention led to significant long-term reductions in AS scores. While significant reductions in AS were observed in the MICT and Control conditions acutely, these changes were not maintained at the 2-week follow-up. These findings provide initial evidence for the efficacy of web-delivered exercise interventions to reduce AS, though further research is needed to replicate these findings in a larger sample and examine the effect of this intervention when multiple sessions, rather than an acute bout, are completed.