Guidelines about physical activity and exercise to reduce cardiometabolic risk factors: Protocol for a systematic review and critical appraisal

Introduction Physical activity can prevent a wide range of diseases, including highly prevalent conditions such as heart disease, diabetes and associated cardiometabolic disorders. Numerous guidelines for the prescription of physical activity and exercise to promote general health and prevent disease are released each year, but the quality of these guidelines is currently unknown. This systematic review and critical appraisal of physical activity and exercise guidelines aims to summarise the current status and quality of these guidelines to provide suggestions to improve the development of future guidelines in this area. Methods and analysis We will conduct a systematic review of guidelines in Ovid MEDLINE(R) and Epub Ahead of Print, In-Process & Other Non-Indexed Citations, and Daily, Ovid EMBASE, Ovid Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, Ovid Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews and Scopus databases published from database 2000 through 23 October 2019, written in English for the use of physical activity and exercise for the prevention of cardiometabolic disease and related risk factors in otherwise healthy individuals. We will also search the grey literature for additional eligible documents. We will use the Appraisal of Guidelines for Research and Evaluation II tool to assess the quality of eligible recommendations from all included guidelines, as well as perform exploratory analyses on guideline development variables. Ethics and dissemination As a protocol for the review and critical appraisal of published documents, no potential ethical considerations are discussed. The protocol will guide the development of the review, which will be disseminated to relevant journals for publication. PROSPERO registration number CRD42019126364.