The study was published in BMC Geriatrics this summer and found people who went to the fitness facilities had a 27 per cent reduction in the risk of heart attack and stroke.

Those who went to work out more than once a week were 23 per cent less likely to need emergency room care.

“Exercise really does improve their lives, not only needing to use the emergency room less often, or prolonging life, but it also results in decreased mental illness, in particular depression and anxiety,” said Dr. Alan Katz, one of the co-authors of the study.

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Unlike the previous research, the current analysis used polygenic risk scores for depression, which summarize the estimated effect of genetic variants to determine the potential association with MS disease activity, so results are less likely to be explained by reverse causality.

This study increases awareness of the link between depression and MS, study investigator Dr. Kaarina Kowalec, assistant professor at the College of Pharmacy in UM’s Rady Faculty of Health Sciences,  told Medscape Medical News. “We’re starting to understand how depression affects relapses and disability progression in MS,” she said.

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